Hollow Heroes
by tider58
Summary: Because Spike's worth saving. Spuffy, Spike and Dawn friendship. Chapter 16 is up...
1. Chapter 1

**_Spike and Dawn ficlet #4, in the same reality as "Always Been Bad," "Safe With Evil," and "Petty Theft," all found in my bio. This one borrows a little dialogue from the Buffy episode "Beneath You." There might be a Chapter 2 here if not a separate ficlet—I'm not sure how I'm going to work that out. Please read and review. Many thanks!_**

ETA: BeerGood, thank you for your thoughtful review. I'm sorry I had to delete and repost this story because there was something I needed to change, so your review got lost in the process. But I really appreciated it, as always, especially from such a great writer.

xxx

Hate.

Hate wasn't even a strong enough word. Revile. Detest. Loathe. Abhor. Despise.

Those were better, maybe. Less simplistic, anyway. Less overused and underwhelming. Because when she looked at him, this man—this _monster_—recently roused from the depths of insanity, who was now standing in her living room as if he had a place there anymore or ever would again, the _last_ thing she wanted was for anyone to underestimate her feelings.

She tried to kill him with her eyes, but he wouldn't look at her. And wasn't that just like a coward. The kind of coward who tries to rape your injured sister on the floor of the bathroom and then disappears into the night without a word. The kind of coward who comes back, inexplicably crazy, and takes up residence in the basement of your high school, and who, when you sneak down to confront him begins spouting terrifying nonsense (with _tears_ rolling down his cheeks for the love of God, as if he's even a fraction as sorry for what he's done as he should be) until you want to just beat him back into coherence.

She'd attempted to do just that, in fact, to no avail. And he hadn't pushed her away or knocked her down with a single punch (and hadn't part of her _expected_ him to do that, this person she once would have sworn would never _ever_ hurt her or Buffy?). He hadn't even tried to catch her small, battering fists; hadn't said, "Bloody hell, Bit, what's got into you?" or "Violence is more big sister's m.o., innit?" or laughed at her as he easily absorbed her blows and waited for her to wear herself out. No. He'd stood still, barely blinking as she pounded away at his solid chest, at the hard, unyielding muscle of his stomach, his dangling, motionless arms. Only his eyes revealed any reaction, their ice blue depths hinting at more sanity and understanding and—_sadness?_—than she was willing to analyze.

"I hate you," she'd told him as he pierced her with that haunting gaze. "Do you get that? I hate you, and I don't care what made you this way. You deserve it for what you did to her. You deserve everything you get." She had to ignore the distinct tremble in her voice, had to chalk it up to anger. That must be why she was crying, too. Because of the anger. The hate. Why else? "I should kill you now," she spat. "No one would care. I was the only one who ever did, and now I don't, so there's no one else to stand up for you. Buffy might be mad for a minute because she's got some sick sense of responsibility for the way you are now, but she'd get over it pretty fast when she thought about what you did to her. The rest of them? Would probably throw a party in my honor when I tell them I dusted you. We'd all be better off. Are you listening to me, you worthless demon? Can you even hear me, or are you too much of a psycho now to understand me?"

He cocked his head and studied her intently for several long moments, and Dawn shifted uncomfortably under the scrutiny. And a chill went up her spine as she sensed the real Spike, the decidedly less crazy Spike, the Spike that was her friend, her protector, before he'd committed that unforgivable act, just beneath the surface of this silent, emaciated, unnerving Spike-ghost. He suddenly retreated to an especially dark, shadowy corner of the dark, shadowy basement and then came back and stood before her. He reached out his hand and held something toward her, his eyes merciless now, challenging. She looked down at his offering with a kind of slow, creeping horror, and a sour taste rose at the back of her throat when she saw what it was. Spike had always been the one to call her bluffs.

Her hand darted out and smacked the stake from his grasp. It hit the cement floor with an echoing _clack_ and rolled noisily away into the shadows. Dawn began backing away from him, toward the stairwell that would lead to the brightly lit and comfortingly mundane high school hallway. "Too easy," she managed, her voice shaking harder now, uncontrollably. "You don't get off easy." With that, she turned and ran as if she were being chased, and she didn't stop until the basement door was at her back, safely enclosing him in the darkness.

And now, scarcely a week later, here he stood in her living room, all whole and clean and _not_ babbling psychotic obscenities at imaginary offenders. Xander was poised to attack; Dawn could feel the tension that thrummed through his body as he stood protectively at her side as if expecting the vampire to fling himself across the room and sink his fangs into her at any moment. Xander, she knew, just wanted an excuse.

"_What_ is he _doing_ here, Buffy?" he demanded icily, his eyes not leaving Spike as he addressed his friend with barely suppressed rage in his voice. Spike seemed to be the only person who could bring that out in Xander, Dawn mused distractedly.

Buffy, to her credit, had the decency to look slightly ashamed. "Xander, calm down. It's not what you—he needs help."

"And _you're_ going to give it to him. You're going to _help _him. You're okay with letting Dawnie sleep under the same roof with the guy who tried to rape you."

Buffy took a deep breath. "We need his help too."

"Okay, but I don't think that's necessarily true, Buff. In fact, I think we're better off just taking our chances with_out_ the help of this evil insane vampire rapist, thanks anyway."

Buffy winced at Xander's flinty tone. "Please. Stop. Please just stop."

"Is that what you said to him that night?"

"Xander!" Buffy's eyes flashed.

Spike flinched, and then he spoke in a soft, gentle tone so unlike his usual one that Dawn was momentarily taken aback. "'S'all right," he murmured gruffly. "Just leave it. I'll go."

This seemed to fan the flames of Xander's anger. "Don't you _dare_ play the martyr," he hissed, and the hatred in his voice was almost palpable. Dawn placed a hand on his elbow in a half-hearted attempt to still the shudders of rage that were coursing through him. The gesture worked, at any rate; Xander glanced down at Dawn and, with what seemed a great effort, swallowed whatever he was going to say or do next. "Dawnie, why don't you go upstairs now?" he suggested, deceptively calm.

"No," she said instantly, accustomed to defending her right to take part in "grown-up" conversations. "I want to know too, Buffy. Why did you bring him here?"

"Dawn, really, maybe you should—" Buffy began.

"No!"

"All right, listen up. Everyone needs to press pause on the Spike hate for a minute and focus on the problem at hand," Buffy said, and her tone changed from pleading and sisterly to stony and authoritative without a hitch, as she slipped easily into full Slayer mode. "We've got a big bad we haven't been able to put a dent in, and in case you've failed to notice, we're several soldiers shy of an army these days. I can't afford _not_ to use any help I can get, in whatever form it takes. Now, both of you have a right to be angry, I understand that and I'm not asking for group hugs here. I'm asking for cooperation. At least until we've put this thing away." Buffy's eyes were unyielding as she looked back and forth between her sister and Xander. "If you can't put aside the other crap and help me fight it, then you can't help me. End of discussion."

There was a long silence. When dealing with Buffy the Sister, wheedling for a later curfew or to borrow a favorite skirt, Dawn's persuasion skills were unmatched. But with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, arguing was useless. She would shut them out if they didn't agree to work alongside Spike, no question about it. Fair or not fair, reasonable or irrational, Buffy was in charge, and Buffy wanted compliance.

Xander gave in first, his tone gruff and bitter, but his words sincere. "You know I'm behind you, Buffy. Always."

"Are we sure he's uncrazy enough to be wandering around outside the basement?" As soon as she had spoken, Dawn realized her mistake.

Buffy looked up sharply. "And how, exactly, would you know anything about that?"

Dawn's eyes flicked to Spike, who finally met her gaze steadily, waiting to hear how she would dig her way out of this.

"I must have overheard something," she muttered lamely.

"Mmm-hmm." Buffy's gaze didn't waver. "We're going to discuss that some more later, you better believe it. But tell me now, Dawn. In or out?"

Dawn had to force herself not to look in his direction. "In," she said firmly. "But I think I speak for Xander too when I say, for the record, we hate this."

"I know you do," Buffy acknowledged softly. Then she went on as if the rift in her ranks didn't exist. "Okay, Spike and I need to get going. We just came by for weapons; we've got a lead to check out. You guys stay here and get on—"

"You're kidding," Xander snapped, taken off guard. "You're going off alone with him?"

"Xander." Buffy said warningly. "Not so much the helpless little woman, okay? I need you and Dawn to stay here and keep researching. Without—without Willow, who knows how long the book work might take? We haven't gotten very far yet. Please. This is what I need from you."

They stared at each other for a long moment in a silent battle of wills, and finally Xander took a deep breath and walked out of the room. Buffy closed her eyes briefly, then glanced at Spike. "Load up," she said, nodding toward the weapons chest in the corner. "I'll be right back."

Dawn stood rooted to the spot as she found herself alone in the room with Spike. The silence was deafening. Emotions fought for control within her. At last, she couldn't hold her tongue any longer.

"Spike."

His head jerked up from the chest he was digging around in and he looked at her, his Bit, with a bizarre expression of equal parts curiosity, hope, and suspicion, with a twist of dread.

"You sleep, right?" When he looked puzzled, she clarified. "You. Vampires. You sleep."

"Yeah. What's your point, Niblet?" His manner remained intentionally off-hand, casual, as he steeled himself for another attack.

"Well, I can't take you in a fight or anything. Even with the chip in your head. But you do sleep. If you hurt my sister at all—touch her—you're gonna wake up on fire."

Strange how it pierced his unbeating heart, hearing such a threat (and not really a threat at all, was it? No, she meant business, his girl) from the child who'd not long since hugged him freely and trusted him absolutely and teased him fearlessly and shed countless tears in his cold embrace. But he'd earned her hatred, every last bit of it. Trouble was, he could see something more than hatred in her wide blue eyes, something so much worse that it almost drove him to his knees. He had a sudden crazy urge to take her hands and beg her for a forgiveness he knew she could never offer.

The look in her eyes now, beneath the shield of her anger, mirrored Buffy's that night, when the crash of flesh and bone and shattering glass meeting cold tile had slammed him to his senses and he'd staggered to his feet with dawning shock and horror.

_Ask me again why I could never love you._

_Because I'm evil_, his mind answered for him. _Because I'm evil and you're clean and I've tarnished you with my devotion and my God, you should have killed me long ago, love._

"Did you hear me?" Dawn asked coldly, oblivious to his inner turmoil. "You don't want to test me this time."

His voice, when he spoke, was surprisingly normal, taunting, indicating nothing of the struggle each word raised in him. "You weren't quite up to the challenge last time we met, as I recall. I gave you the means to make things right, pet, and you didn't do it. Not sure you've got what it takes."

"You're trying to piss me off enough to stake you. You're that desperate to have it over and done with. I told you, I won't let you take the easy way out. Besides," she added, glancing over her shoulder toward the kitchen, where her sister and Xander were speaking in clipped, serious tones. "Besides. I promised Buffy."

"I wonder, what would Big Sis think of the little visit you paid me?" he asked, not sure exactly why he was suddenly so intent on provoking her. Perhaps it was to drive that look of betrayal from her eyes. To take that hatred she was trying so hard to cultivate and make it true.

Dawn almost flinched. "I didn't think you remembered," she said. "You were pretty out of your mind."

"That I was," he agreed. "But remember it, yeah. Bruises only just faded."

She allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction, then resumed her stoic, challenging stance. "Don't tell her anything," she said. "I mean it. You tell her, I'll make you sorry."

"Already am, Bit. Plenty sorry, more than you'll ever know or believe."

"Don't call me that."

Xander came back in the room then, Buffy on his heels. They both seemed more agitated from their kitchen discussion, so Dawn figured it hadn't gone too smoothly. "Get away from him, Dawnie," Xander snapped, pulling her none too gently back a few paces, widening the already-large gap between her and Spike.

"Let's go," Buffy said shortly to Spike, grabbing up a few of her favorite weapons from the open chest. "You guys keep researching. I'll be in touch."

The door closed behind them. Without warning, Xander picked up a book that was lying on the much-abused coffee table and hurled it as hard as he could at the front door. The resounding bang was somehow satisfying in the stillness. Dawn bit her lip.

Without speaking, the two of them settled down in the dining room to begin their research.


	2. Chapter 2

"He's staying in our basement? You're letting him stay in _our_ _basement_?"

"Um, yeah. I thought I'd covered that with the whole 'Spike's gonna stay in the basement' thing. Weren't you there?" Buffy stood resolutely in front of the open hallway linen closet with a pile of bedsheets in her arms, frowning at the shelves so she didn't have to look at Dawn's angry, accusatory face. "Don't we have any extra pillows?"

"I'm not kidding, Buffy. There is like, not one single part of this scenario that I am okay with."

"Then it's a good thing you're not the decision maker."

"You don't need to remind me that my opinion counts for shit around here."

Buffy shot her sister a look and aimed for a careful, even tone. "First of all, watch your mouth. Secondly, Dawnie, I'm so tired of having to justify my decisions all the time. I just spent half an hour having this same conversation with Xander, and as soon as Giles gets the word, I'm fairly sure I'll have to sit through the long-distance British version, which is bound to be long and loud and emotionally draining. I'm not really up for another round in the meantime. Can't you just trust that I have valid reasons for what I'm doing?"

"What you're _doing_," Dawn spat, "is harboring an attempted _rapist_."

"Dawn…"

"You should have left him at the school. He belongs on the hellmouth."

"It was making him crazy."

"_So_ freaking _what_?"

"You can stay at Xander's for a while if you want," Buffy said calmly. "If it'll make you feel better."

"Feel better? To be kicked out of my own home so you can move your sicko vampire boyfriend in? No thanks! I'm calling Giles. I'm sure he'll have a few things to say about this arrangement."

She turned her back on her sister and stormed off down the stairs.

"You're going to _tattle_ on me? Dawn Summers, don't you _dare_—" Buffy began, then sighed wearily and returned to her pillow search. She'd known this wouldn't be easy. Dawn would have issues with Spike even if the incident in the bathroom had never taken place, even if she hadn't been slapped in the face with that knowledge by someone whose sole purpose in telling her had been to exact his own bit of passive revenge. _Damn you for that, Xander,_ she thought, not for the first time.

Dawn had worshipped Spike once, not that long ago, and he had not only hurt her big sister but had become another loved one on a growing list of those who had abandoned her—the two crimes perhaps equally damning in her already ragged heart. And idols, when they fell, fell harder than ordinary people. The wounds they left went deeper and lasted longer and hurt more. This, Buffy knew, was what Dawn carried with her. It's not like Buffy could do anything to help patch things up between them, not when she was the wronged party in question. Not when she herself hadn't forgiven him, completely. Dawn, who always knew the right buttons to push, had driven her point home in one sharp blow soon after Spike had rejoined their ranks. Narrowed, knowing blue eyes fixed on Buffy: "Would _you_ forgive him, if he had done that to me?"

Justification mode never let Buffy down. He has a soul now. The words had become like a mantra, the neat little go-to phrase she kept handy to shield herself from the censure of her family, to curb their verbal and nonverbal disapproval. And it's not as if he ever would have hurt Dawn, even before the soul. Quite possibly even before the chip, when he actually _was_ the Big Bad, instead of just a caged vampire holding stubbornly to an empty claim on the title. He and Dawn had some bizarre, intangible connection, and the thought of him hurting her was—strange as it sounded even in her mind—laughable.

None of that made this situation any easier on Dawn. It also didn't make Buffy any less determined to take care of him, her mortal-enemy-blood-sucking-fiend-convenient-punching-bag-attacker. Her violent lover and compassionate disciple. Her Spike. Her—_what?_

Pillows. Why the hell didn't they have any spare pillows?

xXxXx

Spike sat up on his cot when the basement door opened. He moved to arrange the sheets better around his fully clothed waist, although he didn't know why he should be so bloody modest all of a sudden. Her footsteps were loud, purposeful on the rickety wooden stairs. She carried an armload of laundry and, he noted with a bitter twinge, a stake.

She didn't look at him, but he knew she could feel his eyes on her back as she began to unceremoniously stuff her clothes into the washing machine. "I told Buffy that if she insists on keeping you here, we need to get washer and dryer connections installed upstairs so I don't have to come down here," she said coldly. "I don't want to come down here. Ever. Xander suggested I bring this"—she waved the stake in his general direction, her back still to him—"to keep you in line, and you'd better believe I know how to use it."

"Know you do. Taught you myself," he acknowledged gruffly.

"Don't talk to me. I don't want to hear your voice. I just want to make sure that we're clear, that if you come near me—"

He snorted dismissively. "Dawn. I get it, you hate me, and you're entitled to it—but bugger-all if I believe for one second you think I'd hurt you."

"I'm not taking any chances. And didn't I tell you not to talk to me?"

"You did," he said agreeably. "Unfortunately for you, I don't take orders from bratty little Key-type creatures whose threats are bigger than their actions."

Taken aback by his suddenly unpenitent, Spike-ish demeanor, Dawn spun around to glare at him. "There's a way to shut you up."

Spike rolled his eyes dramatically. "Here we go. _Do it_ then, girl, and stop yammering about it. Do us both a favor. I don't want to bloody be here any more than you want me here, but until I've got elsewhere to go, I'm stuck here. Deal with it, or kill me and deal with _that_. I'm fed up with your games, Bit."

She winced at the use of her nickname, and it was not lost on him. The vulnerability in that tiny gesture, seeping through her tough nothing-gets-to-me façade, made him want to cross the damp, shadowy space between them, grasp her thin shoulders, and draw her to him for comfort she not long ago would have sought in his arms. But she'd never allow it now. Those days had been destroyed by ripped terrycloth and protesting screams. And by her discovery that he was gone without a good-bye or a word of explanation.

"I'm just waiting for a reason," she said in a valiant attempt to regain the indifference that was quickly slipping away from her. "Give me a reason, Spike, and I'll gladly dust you."

The challenge in her eyes was undeniable. Spike scoffed. "Thought I'd given you plenty already. And yet you're still all talk."

They stared at one another in a battle of wills. At last Dawn turned away, which was odd, Spike thought, because she was the reigning staredown champion. He watched curiously as she walked the few paces back to the staircase, put her hand out, and grasped the underside of the splintered, knotty railing. In an instant he saw what she meant to do and shot forward to grab her, but with a quick, vicious motion she yanked her palm across the warped nail that stuck out from the bottom of the railing, the nail that Buffy kept forgetting to tell Xander to fix before someone got a nasty cut.

"Dawn, goddamn it!"

She drew her hand back with a gasp and looked down with detached curiosity at the blood as it started to flow from the superficial but ragged gash. Without thinking, Spike reached for her, his protective instincts telling him to check the damage, repair what he could, take care of her, but her blue eyes snapped up to his and he froze with his hands out. Something in her gaze sent a shiver up his spine. And then rage, as the pieces clicked into place.

Slowly, deliberately, she moved her injured hand in his direction, until it hovered mere inches from his pursed lips. He kept his eyes fixed on hers, horrified in spite of himself, fighting the urge to grasp that slender arm and twist it behind her, to hold her immobile and helpless as he berated her for this foolishness until she surrendered and obeyed like the good little girl she used to be.

Jaw set, teeth gritted tightly. "_Stop. This._"

"Why? I _know_ you wouldn't hurt me, especially now that you're all soulful and good and repentant. Wouldn't hurt me _or_ Buffy ever again, isn't that what you said?" She shifted her hand slightly closer, her tone taunting, cruel. "Come on, don't you want a little taste?"

It was as if his feet were nailed in place. He tried to move back away from her, away from the horrible sweet intoxicating scent of her blood, Buffy's blood, as his demon played threateningly just beneath the surface.

"You stupid little bitch, you have no idea what you're doing."

"Tempting, isn't it? Human blood's kind of a rare delicacy for you these days, isn't it? And here's a whole fountain of it right under your nose, and I'm offering, Spike. Take it."

"Dawn…"

"Come on, Spike, it's just a little—"

"Don't!"

"—blood." One more slight forward motion, and her hand pressed against his lips for just a moment, and that seemed to break the spell. He jerked his head back and grabbed her by the arms in one fluid motion, yanking her toward him until they were nose to nose.

The odd, cold glee in her eyes faded fast, replaced by something more akin to fear as she got an extreme close-up of the intensity of his fury.

"_Get out of here_. _Now_." The command was absolute. When he released her with a little shove that made her stumble, it seemed very unwise to argue. As tears flooded her eyes, she turned her back and ran up the basement stairs, leaving him there with his own rage, his own horror, his own unshed tears.

xXxXx

**_TBC—Please let me know what you think. Feedback is much appreciated._**


	3. Chapter 3

He didn't spare Buffy a glance when she came clattering down the same stairs her sister had fled up just minutes before. He sat slumped over on his cot, head in his hands, still reeling from his encounter with the youngest Summers. She'd shaken him, that was for sure. It's what she'd intended to do, after all, and she'd bloody well succeeded. It was one thing for her to hate him, to take every chance to remind him what a waste of space he was, what a monster he'd proven himself to be, to lash out at him physically, both of them knowing she couldn't hurt him that way—it was quite another for her to tempt him with her blood. That was a whole new game, and a dangerous one. He feared for her and chided himself for giving a damn. Couldn't even blame the soul for that particular weakness, because he'd loved her—_them_—long before this new burden.

"What's wrong with Dawn?" Buffy asked, eliciting a strange huff of laughter from him.

"Easier question, love, is what's _not_ wrong with her? Idiot child has taken leave of her senses, for starters. Makes me look like a poster boy for mental stability, she does."

"She's really upset."

"She should be. So'm I."

"What did you—what happened?" Buffy corrected quickly.

Not quickly enough. Spike raised his head, blue eyes snapping to hers in that intense gaze that chilled her and thrilled her, feeling for all the world as if he could read her mind. "What did I do to her?" he said dryly.

"That's not what I meant."

"Yes it is. No reason for you not to think that way, is there? But I didn't touch her. Well, perhaps I shook her up a bit, but only to get my point through that thick Summers head of hers. I did far less than she was asking for, I'll grant you that."

"Xander thinks having you here is a mistake," Buffy blurted out.

Spike smirked. "My, aren't you skilled with understatement, pet."

"If it's going to be this upsetting to Dawn, I'm—I just don't know what to do. I mean, I want you here. At least, I _think_ I do. We need you, whether the others realize it or not. I just—I'm not winning any role model of the year awards for it."

"I'll go, Buffy. I've said it, I mean it. I'll find somewhere else to settle in, somewhere close by. Maybe reclaim my old crypt from Clem and his demon slacker squad." He cleared his throat. "I don't want to cause you any more grief. I _won't_."

Buffy stepped forward, knelt on the floor in front of his cot. "I know you mean what you're saying. I know Dawn and Xander mean what they're saying. Well, Xander does. Dawn … she's just a little broken right now."

"More than you know," Spike agreed. There was a long, heavy silence, and then he raised his scarred eyebrow and nodded toward the basement door above them. "You should go tend to her. She needs you. And while you're at it, give her a good smack upside the head and a refresher in the fundamentals of vampire safety. Even when they're souled."

Buffy hesitated, seeming to want to say something more, and then deciding against it. She stood gracefully, keeping her eyes on him. "We'll figure something out," she said at last. "I'm not shutting you out."

…_again. _She didn't say the word, but they both heard it. Spike watched her until the kitchen door at the top of the stairs closed behind her. An expression of wonder temporarily eased the weariness in his eyes.

xXxXx

Dawn was squatting in front of the cabinet under the sink, rummaging around for Band Aids, when Buffy pushed the bathroom door open behind her. Gasping and scrambling to hide her injured hand, Dawn lost her precarious balance and sprawled awkwardly on the floor.

"What are you—? Dawn, you're bleeding!"

"Oh, this? It's nothing."

"It's not nothing. Let me see that." Buffy reached for her sister's wrist. Dawn tried to pull away, but Slayer strength won out as always, and she rolled her eyes and waited as Buffy examined the ragged tear in her palm. The nail really had cut deeper than Dawn had intended. The gash hurt like hell, and it made her queasy to look at the glistening scarlet edges of the wound. What had she been thinking? It was likely a question she'd be expected to answer soon, and probably more than once, and she had nothing approaching an answer at the present time. No comment? Would they buy no comment?

"Oh, God, Dawnie, this is deep! How did this happen?" Buffy's brow furrowed with concern as she reached past her sister and retrieved the well-used first-aid kit from under the sink.

"Nail," Dawn muttered. "But don't freak. It's not that bad, Buff, it's just—_ow_! Hey, watch it!" Her hand was suddenly dripping wet and stinging like fire; Buffy had unceremoniously doused it with rubbing alcohol.

"A _nail_? What kind of nail?"

"What do you mean?" Dawn asked, stalling. She jerked her arm away to evade another attack from the bottle of disinfectant Buffy was still wielding.

"What _kind_ of nail? Like, as in _finger_, or as in _rusty_? Because either way, not good. Tetanus, lockjaw, apples, oranges. We should get you to a doctor."

"Come on, Buffy. You'd think you've never seen minor woundage before. You're the queen of amateur surgery. Patch me up and I'll be good as new."

"No, this is looking stitchworthy, Dawn, I think it's outside my realm of exper—" Buffy suddenly froze in the act of tearing the wrapper off a clean gauze pad. "Wait a second. Dawn…?"

"What? _What_?" Dawn demanded, prematurely defensive at her sister's stricken expression.

"Dawn, did you—did this happen in the basement?"

Taken off guard, Dawn took too long to answer, and Buffy filled in the blanks on her own.

"Oh my God! Spike wouldn't—" Buffy took hold of Dawn's arms, carefully avoiding jarring the injured hand, and locked gazes with her. "Dawnie, did you do this to yourself?"

Dawn knew Buffy was thinking back to the night her life had been turned upside down. The night she found out her life hadn't really _been_ her life, and that nothing she trusted or believed in or remembered was real. None of it. Standing in the doorway, sick with grief and horror, crimson streams coursing down her arm and dripping onto the living room carpet. Tara's wide-eyed gasp, Buffy's shocked _What did you do?_, Mom's pure maternal worry, ringing sadly hollow directed, as it was, at her nondaughter.

"Answer me."

"If I told you Spike did it would you kick him out?"

"Stop it! This is not a joke. I'm going to ask you one more time, and you are going to tell me. What? Happened?"

Preparing herself for censure, Dawn forced out words in a tone that sounded steadier than she felt. With effort, she held back the tears that threatened. "You say he's changed. You say he's all _different_ and _good_ and … _souled_, now. You seem to think that's reason enough to forget what he did to you, to forget how he bailed on m—on us. I was just testing that theory. I thought he'd—try it, anyway. And prove Xander and me right."

Horror filled Buffy's eyes as she realized what Dawn was getting at. "You—you tried to—"

"_Yes_, okay? What better way to test out that new soul of his than to see if he could resist the biggest temptation of all?"

Buffy's grip on Dawn's arms was becoming painful, but Dawn held firm, not looking away or backing down.

"And?" Buffy's tone was hard, cold, and her lip trembled slightly. "Did he pass your little test?"

Silence stretched out between them. At last Dawn looked away, something that felt oddly like shame clouding her righteous anger. Buffy released her sister, stood up, and tossed the gauze pad she'd been holding at Dawn's side. "Clean yourself up," she said in that same impersonal tone. "I'll ask Xander to take you to the hospital."

She shut the bathroom door on her way out, and Dawn slumped back against the cabinet and closed her eyes. In the darkness behind her eyelids, she saw Spike's face as she held her bleeding hand to his lips and waited for him to do what attacking her sister and leaving town hadn't been able to accomplish. One little bite, one little taste, and she could have put some truth behind the hatred she professed.

As it stood, she just felt like a traitor. And she still loved him.


	4. Chapter 4

**_A/N: This has, without warning, turned into a sort of flip side to my WIP, "Fireflies." In that one, the attempted rape never happened, but Spike still left town and got the soul. If you like this story, you might like that one, which I'm determined to finish as soon as possible. It's basically the same story from a different angle. Hope you like this chapter. More to come._**

xXxXx

No one was speaking to Dawn. Not that she cared, really, but she kind of hoped the silent treatment wouldn't last much longer. A stony-faced Xander (and who knew there could _be_ such a thing?) had hauled her to the emergency room and waited while they tended her injury. Turned out she didn't need stitches, but the thick bandage that now mummified her hand made even the simplest maneuver, like pouring a glass of milk, virtually impossible.

She cursed loudly as the carton slipped to the floor and began gurgling its contents everywhere. Grabbing a dishtowel from the counter, she squatted down and began to mop up the mess with her good hand, beginning to feel the slightest twinges of self-pity as no one came to help her.

Buffy hadn't even asked how things went at the hospital, which kind of stung, though Dawn would never admit it. And Dawn certainly didn't find "Xander's staying over while I patrol tonight, so don't even _try_ to leave the house" to be an acceptable show of sisterly concern.

When a shadow fell across her and the rapidly spreading puddle of milk, Dawn looked up through dangling strands of hair and had to brace herself before she tipped backward in her precarious position.

"You're just slopping it around. Move."

Struck speechless, she did as she was told. She watched expressionlessly as he knelt down clutching a roll of paper towels and finished cleaning up her spill, back muscles working beneath his black tee-shirt and hair glinting platinum under the harsh fluorescent light. When he was done, he got up, tossed the sopping towels in the trash can, and busied himself at the counter making a drink.

Not looking at her, he took a deep swig of his Scotch on the rocks and said, "So what's the damage?"

"What are you—?" Dawn had to shake herself out of her dumbfounded reverie. "Oh. This?"

He spared her a withering glance usually reserved for the profoundly and incurably dimwitted. "Yeah, _that_. Didn't have to amputate, I see. Though it'd serve you right if they had."

Dawn's tongue felt too big for her mouth. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" she said inexplicably, then resisted the urge to shake her head at her own patheticness.

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, Nib—Dawn. I _live_ for the day you lose some appendage or other. It's what's kept me going this long."

"Oh, is that it? Because I thought it was the sadistic mindfuck you and Buffy call a relationship."

He looked up sharply, but his words and tone remained calm, disinterested as ever. "No one ever called it that."

"Mindfuck, or relationship?"

"You got some mouth on you, little one."

"What can I say? I learned from the best."

He raised his glass to her. "Can't argue that. May I ask at what point during my absence you grew into such a right bitch?"

"I'm my sister's sister."

He smirked. "That you are."

There was a long silence as Dawn stared at him and he studied the ice in his glass. At last she found her voice. "It's not going to work," she said, distantly grateful that the words came out fairly steady.

He didn't respond, but the faintest twitch of his mouth confirmed her suspicion that he knew exactly what she was talking about.

"I'm not going to let you just come up here and pretend it's like it used to be. I won't stand around and spar with you. We're not friends anymore, Spike. You screwed that up, turned it to shit, along with everything else you've ever touched."

He made no indication that he'd heard her, but he reached for the bottle of Scotch and took it with him as he opened the basement door and descended into the darkness.

xXxXx

The sneaking out the window routine was getting old. Luckily, when Buffy wasn't home and Xander was on Dawn Watch (which in itself was oh-so-ridiculous and embarrassing and pointless, she kept trying to convince them), it was unnecessary. These days, Xander inevitably drank one too many beers and sacked out in front of the TV in the living room, leaving Dawn free to walk right past him out the front door. As long as she was back before Buffy, it was a perfect setup. Time enough to meet up with Janice and this weekend's "boy toys" (Janice called them that, and Dawn thought it was a seriously lame and juvenile label, but she'd be damned if she'd tell Janice that because it was Janice who _found_ the boys, while Dawn just clammed up around members of the opposite sex and wouldn't even be able to get a guy to _talk_ to her if left to her own devices), have a little fun at the Bronze, and get back before anyone was the wiser.

She had just closed the front door silently behind her, thinking _Sorry, Xand, but I've got to have some semblance of a normal life, and it's not my fault you people have a super-heightened fear of mortality from years of monster-hunting,_ when a voice spoke from the darkness.

"Oi. What's your rush?"

Stifling a reflexive scream, Dawn spun around to see Spike lurking in the shadows of the front porch, barely visible except for the orange glow of his cigarette coal.

"What the hell are you doing? You scared me."

"Then I can still do something right. What did Harris say when you told him you were going out on the town?"

Dawn glared, and Spike smirked. They faced one another across the dark porch in a silent stand-off.

"You wouldn't sell me out. It's not your style," Dawn said at last. Then after a thoughtful pause, she added, "And I think you know you'd do well to stay out of Xander's way. He doesn't have any qualms about killing you. Buffy's got him on a short leash as far as you're concerned, but I don't think it would take much to break it."

The smirk broadened into a leer, and he took a long drag on his cigarette. Exhaling a noxious cloud of smoke, he said, "Jesus, Dawn, but I have been away too long if you think threatening me with Buffy's whelp will make me cave. Grasping at straws there, pet." His eyes locked on hers and his semi-smile faded. "But Harris or no, Buffy wants you home tonight. Safe."

"And you're her right hand as always," Dawn said sarcastically.

"I'm whatever she needs me to be."

"She _needs_ you out of her life. We all do."

"Keep saying it, Bit," he shot back. "Maybe one day soon you'll believe it."

Dawn stiffened. She opened her mouth to formulate some kind of stinging retaliation, but then Janice's car drew up to the Summers' curb and idled there, and Dawn glanced from it to Spike, weighing her options. Spike watched her with offhand curiosity, but she didn't mistake that for indifference. He would win this battle, if she turned it into one. No way would he let her go, and risk letting Buffy down.

With a sizzling glare, Dawn started down the porch steps. His hand closed around her upper arm, and when she shook him off with more force than was necessary, she didn't miss the flicker of guilty horror that passed across his features _(fingers clawing at terrycloth, feet sliding on tile, echoing screams, pleasespikepleasedontdothis)_ as he let go and took a small step away from her.

"You go down there, then," he said, an almost imperceptible tremor in his voice. "Tell your little addle-brained friend you're not coming and then get back in the house, and we'll all go about our respective pseudo-peaceful existence and each pretend the other is something they'll never be again. Right?"

With a sinking feeling she couldn't quite ascribe to anything in particular, Dawn turned away and went to explain to Janice that she was on her own. When she finally went back up the path and into the house, Spike was nowhere to be seen.

xXxXx

**_Please review. My muse is a feedback whore, and updates come much faster with reviews. Thanks in advance!_**


	5. Chapter 5

The house was getting too damned crowded.

First came Spike, taking up sullen, reluctant residence in the basement. Then, as a direct result of his presence there, Xander went from staying over a couple of nights a week to practically moving in, under the pretense of "keeping an eye on things." Willow returned from her magic-control training in England all understated and delicate and pensive, having regained something of her old sweet demeanor—though softer now, more timid, less brass. Much less veiny. And as if the house weren't full to bursting with just these additions, the recently un-demonized Anya sought sanctuary under their roof as D'Hoffryn's minions showed no sign of weakening in their resolve to kill her.

And then. _And_ _then! _Giles, dear wonderful surrogate-father Giles, had shown up at the front door unannounced one day with alarming if sketchy news of the so-called First Evil—and three teenage girls in tow. Three had blossomed into seven, then nine, then twelve, until the assortment of nameless chattering masses of adolescence had finally seized control of the Summers home. According to Giles, who knew these things, they all possessed some abstract link to the Slayer lineage, which put them in danger, and they would be safe here. _Potentials_. Potential victims of Dawn's murderous rampage, she asserted every time one of them crossed her path—which happened no fewer than seventeen thousand times a day. Safe, hell.

Buffy, of course, no longer had time to log complaints from mere family members. She had an apocalypse to prevent, a gaggle of frightened girls to transform into soldiers, basement-dwelling souled vampires to—well, whatever.

One Saturday morning amid the chaos of the breakfast-time kitchen, Dawn caught her sister's arm as Buffy cut a path toward the toaster among loitering rumpled-looking Potentials, wielding two slices of bread and wearing the preoccupied expression that was becoming her trademark.

"Buffy. One of the Potentials puked on my bed," Dawn said tightly.

"Oh—ew."

"Ew? _Ew_ doesn't even begin to cover it. This is getting out of hand, don't you think? This house was not built to accommodate the population of a small country. Especially not when that population consists of a bunch of squealing, giggling, arguing, _puking_ little girls."

Buffy's brow furrowed. "Most of them are older than you," she said, perplexed, then seemed to realize that wasn't the point. "Dawnie, I know it's cramped. Believe me, I'm not thrilled with the living arrangements either. Xander's going back to his apartment starting tonight, and he's agreed to take some of them with him. That'll at least thin the herd a little. It's the best I can do right now."

"What. About. The _vomit?_" Dawn demanded through clenched teeth.

Buffy shrugged, half-apologetically. "Clean it up?"

She glanced toward the now-free toaster and pounced on it, leaving Dawn standing there glaring after her. There was a piercing whine from the peanut gallery: "Hey, I was next! You can't just—oh. Sorry, Buffy." Well.

After sundown, the whole massive group would gather in the backyard for drills. This went on for a week or so, until Buffy decided they were ready to take their newfound "skills" out on the streets. (Dawn had watched the ragtag bunch from the sidelines enough to know that even she could take out just about any one of them single-handedly, Slayer lineage be damned—they were that bad.) Their first field trip was to the cemetery where Spike's old crypt was. Dawn tagged along because she could—no one would notice her among the masses of long-haired teens, and it might provide some entertainment. That was in short supply these days, especially since someone had actually managed to shoot out the TV with a renegade crossbow. (An incident which brought about the new "no weapons in the house except under supervision of Buffy, Spike, or Giles" rule.)

Spike brought up the rear on the way to the cemetery, keeping his eyes trained straight ahead and offering only monosyllabic grunts in response to the ceaseless chatter aimed at him from assorted members of his fan club. Half the Potentials had a crush on Spike; the other half regarded him with some measure of terror and awe. It was interesting to witness, knowing, as Dawn did, that he secretly relished his ability to strike fear in anyone, even if it was only a handful of hormonal adolescents.

"Didn't know you got an invite for this little outing."

She didn't even give him the satisfaction of a sideways glance as he silently fell in step beside her. "Didn't need one. I've been patroling longer than most of these girls have known vampires exist."

He snorted. "You've been patroling twice, tops. Always with big sis looking over your shoulder."

"I can handle myself. Besides, the odds are with me. Think a vamp's gonna go for me when there's thirty other tasty morsels wandering around looking like they'll pee their pants at the first sign of trouble?"

"Some vamps prefer the ones with attitude, the ones who think they can hold their own. Spices it up a bit, that bravado. Watching it dissolve in the time it takes for us to sink our teeth in."

Dawn rolled her eyes. "You can't scare me. You want to scare someone, take your pick of one of the Potentials. They're still naïve enough to fall for your schtick. Me, I outgrew it years ago."

He smirked. "You did at that," he said. They walked in silence the rest of the way to the cemetery. Buffy's voice rang out from the front, calling his name. Before he went up to join her, he glanced at Dawn. "Got my eye on you, Little Bit."

Perhaps it went without saying, but it was almost—_almost_—nice to hear it again.

xXxXx

**_My shortest chapter ever, but I wanted to get something going before the idea fades. Please review and let me know what you think. As always, many thanks!_**


	6. Chapter 6

Jagged, brilliant, sharp, aching bursts of confusion. Chaos. Flashes of red, blurs of motion, none of it purposeful or driven, just staggering, just senseless, jumbled. Just making it worse. Hands, a flurry of hands like birds, like those caged birds Dru used to keep until they died because she never fed them, never remembered that they were living creatures, never realized because there were others, always more, always replaceable. Her whimper and her whim, he was a slave to both, and

_Yes, pet, I will bring you another, of course I will, I'll take care of everything, please don't fret, my love, I'm sorry I upset you, I shouldn't be so harsh, forgive me? …_

Flailing arms—his? Something soft but solid yielded with a yelp and a crunch and yelling

_Dawn! Oh my God. Talk to me, Dawnie! Buffy, she's—_

Should have felt good, once would have felt good, now only that ache of wrongwrongwrong and damned and

_Is she okay? Xander?_

_fuck_ Spike was so tired, couldn't they just let him sleep, for once just stop killing and ripping and bleeding the world dry and it takes so much out of you, being evil, it hurts and hurts and hurts

_Dawnie, it's Xander. Can you open your eyes? Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me._

Look at me, little one, look at me before I take your life because it's better that way, and he's taught me well, my sire's sire, to make them look before going in for the kill so that you can drink up that fear, that gut-wrenching horror in their eyes, the knowledge that you are God and you are End, the thing that woke them in the night screaming for their mummies, the rejection of their plea for salvation

_Buffy, she's not waking up. There's blood. She hit her head, and I think her nose is broken_

and when they cry his love laughs and dances and twirls in the streets chanting about burning embers and rivers of blood and he secretly thinks that there's something missing in him because there's no giddiness, even when they breathe their last into his cold flesh, there's only

_Girls, go upstairs now. Xander, take Dawn and find Willow; she'll help, I can't leave him like this, he'll hurt himself _

hollow and black, hollow and blood-red that turns black in the shadows

_And that would be such a goddamn tragedy, for him to hurt himself like he's hurt your little sister? Wow, Buffy, I'm_

Bitter, so bitter.

_Xander, for God's sake don't do this now, just take care of her, please! Take care of her_

Of course. Always take care of her, always care for them, his loves, his weaklings, his frail, sickly mum, delicate and terrible and breakable Dru, implacable Buffy with the fragile heart encased in steel lest she find out what it is to be one of the un-Chosen destroyed by worship, wide-eyed Dawn, the child of his soul, the blue-eyed marvel who loved a monster with such innocent abandon that he'd wept more than once when he failed her.

"Dawn, where's—the birds are all bleeding, and I—she's—he's cut her and she's fallen out of the sky and it's just bits now … I've broken them, my sweets, it's all hollow—" He can't find the right words, the ones he wants, they dance away like Drusilla on those dizzy nights after a kill and he's reaching but nothing comes and Buffy is … Buffy is …

Pinning him down. Her face drifts in and out and into his frame of vision, hovering above him like a fallen angel, lips pursed tight, sweat standing out in little beads of silver on her brow as she straddles him and holds him still even as his struggles beneath her weaken and cease. He tries to move his arms, but she is relentless, his angel of stone.

"Spike," she says, and it is a question, and it is tender.

"Love…" _What have I done?_ he doesn't ask.

"I need you to stop fighting me now. You're okay, you're home."

_Home. _

She looks troubled, so troubled, and he wants to comfort her but he's so afraid to know the truth. She gives him a rough sketch, not the full-color version, but it's enough. Turned against the girls, no rhyme, no reason; supposed to be teaching them, but snapped and tried to … tried to …

He remembers long silky hair caught up in his fist, a fragmented burst of girlish screaming, the resistance, the scuffle, the ancient killfire in him igniting unchecked, and someone (_himself?_) watching from the shadows, cheering him on.

His hands catch his eyes, not the flesh but the spatters of bright red decorating the knuckles, and he is horrified and mesmerized, and (_There's blood_)

"Bit, where is she? What did I do? Buffy, _what did I do?_"

Buffy tosses a guilty glance over her shoulder, toward the stairs and the door and the ones she truly belongs to, up where heroes live and love and fight monsters like him to the death, to dust. "She's okay, I think," she says, and it's almost apologetic, that tone, so odd. "You were out of your head, Spike. You were holding onto Vi, I think it was, about to—um—to bite her, and Dawn tried to help, and she got too close, and … she's going to be fine."

_Never hurt her, never, not my Bit. _

He tries to sit up but she forces him back down, stern now, softness fading. "Listen to me. You've got to stay here. I'm going to check on Dawnie, and I'll be back for you. But right now … you've got to stay here. Please."

Her eyes tell him that her friends would dust him on sight now.

"Buffy?"

A voice from the top of the stairs, hesitant, timid. One of the new ones.

Buffy shoots him one more pleading glance before turning to look at her. "Yeah?"

"They're taking your sister to the hospital. She's awake now, but Willow says the bleeding worries her. She thinks Dawn might have a concussion."

"I'll be right there."

She kisses Spike before she leaves. And she chains him to the wall. He doesn't protest.

xXxXx

"The ER people know me by name now," Dawn sulked as Xander helped her in with an arm around her waist and deposited her on the couch. "It's getting embarrassing."

"Well, the last one was on you," he said, shooting her a pointed look that made her wonder about a statute of limitations on pissiness. His tone hardened. "But this time … this time the responsible party's going to pay, count on it."

She stretched her long legs out in front of her and leaned back against the cushions. "What happened?" she asked softly. "I mean, why did he just—"

"Why? Because he's a _monster_, Dawn, that's why," Xander said, his voice coming out much rougher than she was accustomed to hearing it. "And we kill monsters, that's what we do. If Buffy's too out of her mind to do it, then I'll do it for her. Anyway, it's nothing for you to worry about. You need to rest now."

He left her there wondering where all the Potentials were but grateful that the house seemed relatively peaceful for a change. Her head throbbed (though they'd pronounced her concussion-free, thank God, or she would have had to stay overnight for observation) where she'd smacked it on the concrete of the basement floor, her unbroken but severely swollen nose felt hugely disproportionate on her face, and her top lip (also swollen) was still stubbornly seeping copper-tasting blood into her mouth. All in all, she felt like shit.

Buffy finally came up and fussed over her as a good sister/guardian should, but it felt oddly hollow, forced, and Dawn knew it was more for show than anything, and that the large portion of Buffy's mind (and possibly her heart) was down in the basement with their unstable, now-proven-dangerous former ally.

"Xander's going to kill him," Dawn said to Buffy's back as she turned from her frenzied pillow-fluffing and antiseptic-applying and headed for the kitchen to make some hot cocoa. Buffy froze and slowly faced Dawn, her expression unreadable.

"He didn't mean to hurt you, Dawn."

"I know. I think I know. But I doubt that matters to Xander."

"Do you think he's right?"

"Xander?" Dawn frowned, shaken by the question. "I don't know."

"Spike hurt you. Do you want him to die?"

Dawn shivered under Buffy's intense stare. She didn't know how she would answer the question until she had. Her response was steady, firm, absolute.

"No."

Buffy nodded, her eyes softening. "He hurt me too," she said. "And I don't either."

xXxXx

**_Please let me know your thoughts. There is more in the works if you'd like me to continue. (And probably even if you couldn't care less, but the blatant plea for reviews works better the first way.) So please review!_**


	7. Chapter 7

"I don't like it one bit. I mean, she's supposed to be looking out for our well-being, and this seems pretty _anti_-our-well-being if you ask me."

"Exactly. He could snap at any time, and someone might end up dead next time, instead of just bloody."

"You guys are overreacting. He's chained to the wall down there."

"You really think chains are gonna stop him if he decides he wants a tasty human snack?"

Three Potentials huddled together in a corner of the kitchen, speaking in hushed tones about the vamp of the hour. No one had spoken of anything _but_ him since The Incident the previous day, and the fact that their fearless leader had yet to address what had happened with any of them just added to the collective unease that hovered over the Summers camp. The troops were shaken.

Vi, a cute redhead with a perpetually worried expression, glanced down at her Ace-bandage-wrapped wrist and frowned. "Well I'll tell you one thing," she said, "I'm not getting near him again. Ever. I don't care why he flipped out; I'm not going to stick around and wait for the next time."

Rona nodded. "And what about Dawn? I mean, he backhanded her clear across the room. Could have killed her. If Buffy wasn't around to keep him in line, he'd make his way through us one by one, and finish us off, or even worse, make us like him. The second she drops her guard, or those chains break, we're all screwed."

"No."

The three looked up sharply at the new arrival. Dawn stood in the doorway, battered face looking no worse for the wear after a day's healing, but also no better. Her blue eyes were narrowed, her cracked, scabbed-over lips pressed together, her jaw set. The expression gave her an air every bit as commanding as the Slayer's.

"Hi, Dawn," Chloe said brightly. "We were just—"

"I heard you," Dawn interrupted, her voice icy. "And you're wrong. He wouldn't hurt us, not if he could help it."

"Say you're right," Rona said slowly. "Does it really matter? When he snaps somebody's neck, or sucks their blood, are we gonna sit around talking about how he didn't mean to do it? Nah. I think we'd just dust him. Isn't that what Slayers do?"

Dawn stepped forward, her gaze holding Rona's steadily, challenging. "You're not a Slayer," she said, her voice deceptively even.

"Why do you care anyway?" Rona asked. "I thought you hated him. Didn't you tell us when we first got here that he was nothing but your sister's reformed evil lap dog? And that when she wised up he'd be dust? Why do you suddenly care, after what he did to you?"

Dawn reached forward purposefully. Rona flinched and backed away as Dawn moved around her to place her hand firmly on the basement doorknob.

"You don't know Spike."

As Dawn stepped into the darkened stairwell, Vi spoke up nervously. "Dawn, I don't think we're supposed to go down there. Buffy said—"

The door shut behind her with a harsh, stubborn click, cutting off the rest of Vi's empty warning. She took the stairs less determinedly, uncertainty creeping in now that the others were behind her. And then she reached the bottom, and saw him.

Chained to the wall like a volatile dog. Like a prisoner. Like an enemy. He was slumped over on the cot, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, defeated. Just defeated. Dawn's heart jolted painfully in her chest. _This is what love does to you._

It was so silent down here. Oppressive. She wished he would look at her. She tried to say his name, but a lump rose in her throat and she found she couldn't speak. So she started toward the cot, toward him.

His whole body lurched violently at the sound of her approaching footsteps. _"Stay back!"_ he shouted, and she was so surprised that she froze midstep, rooted to the spot and staring at him with her mouth hanging open slightly. His voice softened. "Stay away from me. Go back upstairs." He still wasn't looking at her.

She licked her cracked lips nervously. "I just wanted to—"

"I don't bloody care what you wanted, now get _out_."

Stung, Dawn stood her ground, watching him refuse to look at her. She tried again. "Spike, listen to me."

"Don't."

"I know you didn't—"

"_Don't!_"

She raised her voice over his. "I know you didn't mean to do this!"

He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound, noting but hopelessness, harsh and bitter. Eyes still fixed on the floor between his feet. "You … you and your bitch of a sister both think you know everything. Well how 'bout this. Could be I _did_ mean to. Could be I got sick and tired of being your punching bag and her fucking slave and decided to put an end to it. Was going to do her in next. How's that? Not so bright anymore, are you?"

"Oh, Spike, that's crap," Dawn said disdainfully. "Listen, I don't know what happened to make you—freak out—like that, but I know it was out of your control. I know you wouldn't do this to me on purpose. Look at my face and tell me you did this on purpose."

He didn't move, and it was Dawn's turn to laugh. "You're so proud of your work that you can't even look at it, huh? Yeah, you're such a monster."

"It's what you've been telling me all along, right? Evil, unworthy, unforgivable, irredeemable. So, I agree, and then you go changing the rules? Sorry pet. Doesn't work that way."

"Will you stop feeling sorry for yourself and _look_ at me?"

Slowly, seemingly against his will, Spike raised his head from his hands and let his eyes come to rest on Dawn, taking in the mass of bruises and the caked remnants of blood. His face remained expressionless, but his jaw tightened and his hands clenched together viciously in his lap.

"You didn't mean to," she said. "Something is wrong with you. We want to help."

When he finally spoke, after what seemed an eternal silence, his voice was strained and husky, as if it took great effort to form the words. "Might want to take a poll on that, love, before you go enlisting the help of the Scoobies without their permission." He almost smiled, but didn't quite succeed. "It's bound to be an unpopular undertaking."

Dawn let out the breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "_Buffy and I_ want to help you. Screw everyone else."

This time he did achieve a smile, cracked and weak, carrying more than a touch of sadness, but a smile nonetheless. Dawn's heart swelled at the sight of it. Without thinking, she started forward, intending to throw her arms around him for a long-denied embrace.

"No Bit!" he warned sharply, raising his hand to halt her again. She stopped short, but reluctantly, because suddenly she ached to be enveloped in his familiar arms, leather and peroxide and cigarette smoke mingling in a scent that had long since come to mean protection and love and devotion—Spike.

"I won't risk it," he said, and his eyes plead for understanding. "Back upstairs with you, now."

She considered refusing out of habit, but in the end she didn't. When the door shut behind her, he sagged back on his cot, emotions not befitting a demon flooding through him and making his heart heavy. They would help him, he knew. They would find a way to fix this.

He could always count on his girls.

xXxXx

**_What do you think? More?_**


	8. Chapter 8

Subtlety wasn't their forté.

When Buffy walked into the living room, the fervent buzz of whispered conversation halted as abruptly as if someone had pulled the plug. They might as well have looked up at her as a group and chorused, "Hi, Buff. We're having a private discussion about the potentially homicidal beast you've got chained up in the basement. Care to weigh in?"

The guilty way Willow glued her eyes to the floor when she happened to meet Buffy's sharp gaze expelled any lingering doubt about the subject at hand.

"No one told me there was gonna be a party. Why wasn't I invited?" Buffy asked, keeping her tone carefully neutral. Of the four present, only Giles looked at her. Xander stared determinedly at his hands, Anya's attention roamed aimlessly about the room, and Willow chewed nervously at her bottom lip, an affectation that echoed the shy, geeky, lovable girl the last years had swallowed up.

But Giles, who knew all too well how counterproductive it was to try to hide anything from his Slayer, met Buffy's eyes steadily. "We're discussing what should be done about Spike."

Buffy stiffened but forced herself to remain collected, rational. They had valid concerns. Irrelevant, in the end, but valid. She shouldn't dismiss them. "Don't leave me hanging," she said. "What—in your opinion—should be done about Spike?"

"Want me to field this one?" Xander asked.

"I think we all know damn well what your solution would be," Buffy snapped at him, the sudden harshness of her tone surprising all of them. "You've made your feelings abundantly clear. And I think I've done the same with mine."

Giles sighed and removed his glasses. "Buffy, you are putting the girls—all of us—in danger by keeping him—"

"—alive? Is that it? You want me to kill him? Giles, we're waging a war against unimaginable odds here. Are you suggesting that I _put down_ one of our most powerful allies without even trying to help him?"

"It's not that simple. What I'm _suggesting_ is that you consider what's best for everyone concerned. The First has made it clear that It can and will use Spike to Its advantage. Having him here goes against all rationality; we're fools at Its mercy." Giles lowered his voice and went on more gently. "Sometimes the Slayer must put aside personal biases and do the right thing even when it feels wrong. I believe this is one of those times."

Buffy's eyes blazed at her Watcher, and her voice trembled with suppressed anger. "How can you even say that to me?"

Giles closed his eyes briefly, too late realizing his mistake. "Buffy…"

"I've never done _anything_ _but_ the fucking _right thing_!" she raged, and at last she had their attention. All eyes locked on her, shocked by this uncharacteristically emotional outburst. "In case everyone's forgotten, I killed Angel for the good of the world. I killed _myself_, for the good of the world. It's all I know _how_ to do. And I'm telling you, keeping Spike on our side _is_ the right thing. We need him whole and we need him ready for the fight. We can't do it without him. _I _can't do it without him." She glared around at each of them in turn, ending with Giles, who sat statue-still, with a pained expression etched into his kind, weary features.

"What do you want us to do?" a soft voice inquired.

Everyone turned to look at Willow in surprise. Buffy's offensive posture relaxed a little, the sting of betrayal easing. She took a deep breath. "What we've always done," she said, giving Willow a grateful little half-smile. "We win."

xXxXx

"No freakin' way!"

"Yes freakin' way. You're going."

"No, I'm not."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Dawn, this could go on all day, and I'll still come out on top. I'll bottom-line it for you. This spell could be dangerous. I will not have you in the line of fire if something goes wrong. You're staying at Xander's while we do this. Any questions?"

"Buffy, you can't shut me out of this!"

"Nope, sorry, that wasn't a question."

"I'm in it as much as you are. I'm in it _more_ than they are. He's family."

Buffy sighed, smiling slightly at her sister's emphatic expression. Dawn sensed weakness and moved in for the kill.

"I'm the only one who loves him, besides you," she said. "It's not right to surround him with people who hate him when you do this—whatever it is—that might end up killing him."

Buffy didn't have the heart to tell Dawn that the _spell_ wouldn't kill him, but that Buffy herself might have to, if something went wrong. If he lost control again, if he went for one of the others … she might end up killing him anyway, and giving them what they'd wanted all along. It was a horrible, unthinkable, really quite possible outcome.

But Dawnie was right enough.

She cleared her throat, spoke sternly. "You'll sit at the very top of the stairs, no closer. You will run if I tell you to run, no questions asked. I'm going to arm you to the teeth with every stake I can load you down with … and you'll use them if you have to."

Dawn's blue eyes lit up and she gave a girlish squeal as she threw her arms around Buffy's neck.

Buffy pulled back, holding Dawn at arm's length and looking at her seriously. "I mean it," she said. "You have to be prepared to fight if you have to. To fight Spike."

A shadow passed across Dawn's features and vanished just as quickly. "I won't have to," she said confidently. "It'll work."

xXxXx

Where Buffy had caved, Spike was immovable.

"Absofuckinglutely not. No. No way. What the hell's going on in your head, Slayer? She's not in this. No." If the chains were long enough to allow him to pace, he would be wearing a furious trench in the concrete floor.

"It's not your decision," Dawn piped up from her dutiful position at the top of the basement steps.

He pointed at her. "You. Out."

"Spike, she's armed," Buffy reasoned. "Dawnie can handle a stake if she has to. Besides, the odds of you getting past me—us—and making it that far are slim to none."

"How about the odds of this crazy spell of Red's working the way we want anyway? I'm not altogether sure I trust her enough to be messing around in the magicks again, much less with something like this, that could get every last one of you killed before all's said and done. In point of fact, I think someone needs to double-check the Wicca's incantations and make sure she's not after some more flaying fun—"

"Hey, standing right here," Willow spoke up. "Now hush. I'm making sure I've got everything I need."

"So, ah, how's it supposed to work, again?" Xander asked. "She finishes her chanting and suddenly he's Super Evil Spike instead of just Evil Ex-Murdering Attempted Rapist Spike?"

"Well, theoretically, something like that," Giles agreed. "If we're successful, we'll be able to identify the First's hook and deactivate it, or at the very least get a better idea of how to remove Spike from under Its control." His next words were almost inaudible. "If that is in fact possible."

Buffy shot him a look but he busied himself cleaning his glasses unnecessarily.

Spike reached out and caught Buffy's hand, looking up at her from the edge of his cot with intense blue eyes. "Slayer. If …" He shook his head and tried again. "Kill first, think later. Promise me."

Looking steadily back at him, she nodded. An understanding passed between them, and Spike at last looked away and raised his voice to address the other one.

"Oi, Niblet!"

"Yeah?"

"Get out."

"No."

He sighed in helpless frustration. "Then listen up, you bloody brat. The same goes for you, do you hear? Hesitate with that stake, and you'll live to regret it."

Dawn looked down at the stake in her hands and twirled it around. "Don't worry, Spike. I got your back."

A few minutes passed in silence, and at last Willow looked up from her spellbook. "I think we're ready."

xXxXx

**_Perhaps I'm beating a dead horse here, but shall I continue? Thanks for the reviews. You guys rock!_**


	9. Chapter 9

**_A/N: Okay, I got way overexcited this weekend when I stumbled upon a cache of insanely good Spike-centric videos put together by the amazingly talented Spikey Lover. And there was one in particular that made me giddy, because it's the only one of its kind I've been able to find: A Spike/Dawn friendship vid! It's set to, of all songs, "Ben" by Michael Jackson, which works surprisingly well for these two, if you can suspend the rat connotations temporarily. Anyone who has a soft spot for these two lovable misfits will adore it. Unfortunately, after three failed attempts to put a link here, I've come to realize that this site hates me, it refuses to incorporate the link I keep trying to put in, and that I should quit while I'm ahead. If you're interested in this fabulous and adorable vid, just PM me and I'll be happy to send you the link that Will. Not. Cooperate. on this site. Now that that's out of my system, please keep reading and ignore my psychotic fangirlish ramblings. Oh yeah, and review, if you can find it in your heart._**

xXxXx

So the spell had begun ordinarily enough. Ordinary, that is, if you belonged to a group of people whose use of magic was as commonplace as a trip to the neighborhood coffeehouse. For Dawn, ordinary. She watched as Willow, Buffy, and Anya made the necessary preparations, sprinkling unidentified substances from little crystal jars around in a circle on the floor, lighting candles, smearing something dark and smudgy on both Willow's and Spike's foreheads. Par for the course, spellwise.

Through it all, Giles looked on from the sidelines, ready to step in and make adjustments as warranted (but that didn't seem likely; the girl who had once looked to him for guidance in her magical education had long since surpassed him in some frankly frightening ways). Xander stood near the bottom of the stairs, arms folded across his chest. Anxiety was pouring off him in waves, and Dawn certainly could empathize with that, even if their fears came from different places. At one point, she drifted down to stand next to him in a silent show of support, but was immediately ordered back to the top step by impressively synchronized barks of authority from Spike, Buffy, Giles, and Xander himself. She retreated obediently enough, but wished like hell they would just get started, already. The waiting around was excruciating.

And then Willow sat down cross-legged in the circle the girls had created on the floor. She nodded at Spike, who slowly but resignedly did the same, kneeling first and then settling down smoothly within the curve of the circle. The chains that secured him to the wall stretched to their limit, allowing him no slack. Willow reached out and took both of his large rough hands into her small, delicate ones.

"Well, wish me luck," she said, and they all heard the tremor in her voice.

"Good luck, Willow." Everyone looked at Anya, mildly surprised by her tactful offering. Xander gazed at her affectionately from across the room, some of his tension evaporating, and then Anya added sincerely, "I hope you don't lose control and get all power hungry and try to destroy the world again." Catching the exasperated glances coming her way, she hastily explained, "Well, that was bad, remember?"

"You'll be fine, Willow," Giles said over the awkwardness. The calm confidence of his tone seemed to be just what Willow needed. She glanced over at him and gave him a wobbly but sincere smile.

She looked back at Spike, and her next words were solid, strong, commanding. A shiver jittered down Dawn's spine.

"Close your eyes."

xXxXx

An alley. A dark alley. A dark alley with cobblestones under his feet, and where the hell do they even have those anymore? Where is this place?

"William?"

He spins around in surprise at the name and the voice and sees her, and sees what she's holding, and abruptly wants to sink to his knees or open his eyes, but they're open, aren't they? And then he does drop down beside her, and she strokes his hair and offers a blood-stained smile and it is the grinning face of Death before him but he kisses her because it has been so long, so long. And because he once loved her.

"I saved some for you," she tells him, and he pulls away and looks at the child in her arms. Unconscious, blessedly so for her and for him, but not dead yet, still clinging.

"How did I get here?" he asks, and she laughs and it hurts his ears.

"You never left. You'll never leave. This is your place."

Transfixed by the half-lidded eyes and the pale parted lips of the sleeping but not peaceful child, he tilts his head and addresses his dark lover. "I tried," he says. "Ran as fast and far as the chains would allow, but it never works. I always come back."

"To me. To you."

"The killing's never done."

And then she is on top of him, his head pillowed on the cold mossy cobblestones and her hands are everywhere, lips drawing blood, fingernails slicing skin and he wants it, needs it, needs her. He thrusts and claws and breathes even though he doesn't need to but—but what about—

"_Buffy?_"

Drusilla draws back and licks blood-blackened lips and laughs again, hollow, scraping. "She was never yours, my love. She wants the bright, the white and the silver." Her tongue finds his lips and traces them, smearing blood like paint. "And you're all dark and dripping red."

He half-pushes her off him, propping himself up on his elbows on the cobblestones and tries again. "Dawn, then."

Her eyes flash and he sees anger there, and that's unusual because she is above _(below?)_ such base emotions but it's there, and he doesn't understand.

"The daughter you never had?" she drawls, and he can't remember contempt ever coloring her words before. "Your child, your burden?"

"My bit," he whispers.

"Do you want her to suffer?"

"Never."

Drusilla's eyes drift casually downward, and Spike follows her gaze and utters a strangled wretched shout. The unconscious child is in his arms now, and it's _her_, and he almost lets her slip from his lap to the ground under the force of shock but instead he presses his palm to her neck where she's been bitten and tries to stop the relentless flow of life as it trickles and drips and stains his hands.

"_What have you done!_" he shouts at Drusilla, and his sire giggles and twirls away from his seeking, grasping, punishing hands.

"Silly William," she says giddily. "Don't you understand? It's not me, it's you. You're their end. You'll finish this."

And again he follows her gaze as it comes to rest just behind him, where he crouches with his dying sweet bit clutched in his arms. No. No. _Nononononono—_

The crumpled shape sprawls brokenly just beyond his reaching fingers, but it's too late, he sees that plainly enough even through the shimmering haze of anguish. Silky tangled wisps of gold obscure her beloved face, but it's matted, that gold, and clotted with blood. Buffy is dead, Dawn is fading in his arms.

There is no place for him, in a world without them.

xXxXx

"What's happening?" Dawn asked in a small, childlike voice, and this time when she slipped down to the bottom of the stairs and threaded her arm through Xander's no one yelled at her for moving from the "safe" spot. Xander simply maneuvered her behind him slightly and gave her hand a tight squeeze of reassurance that she was pretty certain he didn't feel.

"Giles? Is—is this okay?" Buffy asked, and the open fear in her eyes and voice did absolutely nothing to calm Dawn's own. "Should we do something?"

Giles frowned at the spectacle in the center of the room and struggled to pull himself into the old comforting-adult niche he'd always filled for this group of not-quite-children. "I'm not—I think—it could be dangerous, to intervene at this point." He tried to offer Buffy an authoritative look that would inspire confidence, but it came across as a grimace. "Let's wait and see."

"I think they're going to die. Giles, are they going to die?"

"Shut _up_, Anya!" Dawn screeched from the other side of the room. Anya looked surprised, slightly wounded. "They're not going to die. Right, Giles?" Dawn asked desperately.

The Watcher took a deep breath and wished not for the first time that Buffy had reconsidered her sister's participation in this. "No, Dawn," he said more calmly than he felt. "Everything's going to be all right."

It sounded empty even to his own ears, paired as it was with the hypnotically disturbing sight before them. Everything within the circle had taken on a reddish glow, some kind of mystical barrier that radiated power so strong the entire room hummed with it. It bathed the two who sat at its center in eerie light, but that wasn't the worst. Where their hands were joined, muscles in both sets of arms straining with some horrible force like pain, but no one wanted to consider that possibility. Tears flowed freely from their unseeing eyes, their features twisted in identical expressions of grief and horror.

And blood, dyed black in the redness, poured in miniature rivers from some unseen wound, gushing in a rapidly spreading pool between them.

Nothing the others could do but watch, wait, and hope that Willow could bring them out.

xXxXx

**_I update like crazy when I get reviews. Without them, my muse tends to wither and die. Thanks in advance for any feedback you take the time to offer._**


	10. Chapter 10

Willow wants to look away, but she can't.

There is something magnetic in the horrible scene before her, something tragic and beautiful, of course, as all truly tragic things are at their core. She can't quite make her eyes obey her brain's command to look at her shoes, or the star-sprinkled sky, or the shadows that engulf the edges of this strange landscape—anywhere but _there_. At him—the grief-stricken vampire crouching in the middle of the dark cobblestone alley with a limp figure cradled in his arms and one at his side. She knows those figures well, _loves_ them well, and even as the shock and grief begin to crash over her as they did on some other terrible day (_Your shirt_…), Willow fights to rein in the emotions and force rationality. Order. Control.

It surprises her when she finds it, when the calming realization clicks into place and she can form a coherent thought that doesn't involve turning her pain and rage at the injustice of it outward, making someone pay. She almost laughs with giddy relief at her ability to remain … well, Willow. And at the other truth she is beginning to grasp.

Order. Control. Rationality.

First and foremost, this isn't real. Spike is _not_ kneeling there rocking a crumpled, lifeless Dawnie in his arms, and Buffy, sweet battered unbreakable Buffy, is _not_ lying dead on the ground next to them.

A spell. There was a spell. There _is_ a spell, she amends—she can feel the tingling sensation prickling the back of her neck in that old intimate way that means power and feels like teetering on the brink of self-destruction.

She must do damage control. Restore him to his own senses, figure out why they are here, what this means, what to do about it. She kneels next to him, almost touches him. Doesn't. Somewhere in the dusty recesses of memory she hears him threatening to push a broken bottle through her face if she doesn't cooperate, and, infinitely worse, to kill Xander if she fails. That's not who he is anymore, she knows that, but forgetting is so long.

"Spike," she says softly, and he flinches away from her, and God, he's crying as if that brand new soul has been ripped to shreds. One of his hands clutches the part of Buffy's hair that is still shiny and golden, fingers carefully avoiding the blood-matted roots. The other hand is tangled in Dawn's long brown tresses, grasping desperately. Willow can't look at them, even knowing what Spike doesn't. "This isn't real."

"I killed them," he chokes out, the words muffled in Dawn's still shoulder.

"No, you didn't," Willow argues automatically. "Drusilla did." Wait, that's not true either. She shakes her head, tries again. "Besides, they're not dead. I mean—_they_ are," she says, nodding toward the two limp forms with a wince. "But the real Buffy and Dawn, they're fine. This is an illusion, Spike. We're not even really here."

He turns a fierce, naked blue gaze on her and for just a moment she draws back in fear because there is something of the old Spike in those eyes. Something single-minded, driven, lovesick and broken, something that wants bloody vengeance for those he believes he's lost (and who knows that feeling better than Willow?).

She steels herself and continues. "We did a spell. We're _in_ the spell now, I think. We're supposed try to figure out what's wrong with you."

He laughs at that, a harsh, wretched sound. "What's wrong with me."

"Spike. We don't have time for this." Willow's tone carries an impatient edge. "I don't know how long we've got, but I do know we need to hurry. I can feel that. Buffy and Dawn are fine. You didn't kill them. _No_ one killed them. They're back in the basement waiting for us to finish this and come back with answers. So snap out of it and help me."

Slowly, as if waking from a dream, Spike raises his head and looks at Willow. "They're all right?" he asks, and she feels a pang of pity at the earnestness in his eyes, the cautious need to believe what she's telling him.

"Yes, I'm sure they are."

He glances back down at his lap, and sees nothing. Where Dawn's pale body had been is empty space, the ground beneath his knees. The hand that held Buffy's hair is also empty, and he turns to see that she has disappeared as well. He feels like crumpling to the street with the sweet agony of relief.

Willow stands up and dusts her pants off. "Let's go," she orders.

He raises his eyebrow questioningly, still reeling and not at all certain he's not going to pass out. "Where d'you suggest, Red?"

"It's your mind," she says, shrugging. "Lead the way."

xXxXx

"How long are we gonna let this go on?" Dawn asked, a note of panic creeping into her voice. "Where is that blood coming from?"

No one answered her. They had all stopped answering her fifteen minutes ago, when the ceaseless, increasingly hysterical stream of questions had reached fever pitch. Frustrated by the lack of response, she suddenly started forward, approaching the circle.

"Dawn, get back!" Buffy snapped, darting over to catch her sister's arm and yank her away from the glowing red globe of energy that had swallowed Spike and Willow. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Someone's got to stop it, Buffy! This can't be right. Are we just going to let it keep going? What's the matter with you?"

"Dawn, please," Giles said, and his studied tolerant tone was decidedly more strained at the edges. "Your hysterics are not helping the situation. If you can't control yourself, go upstairs and wait for us to finish."

Dawn glared daggers at him across the room, and he avoided her gaze, rubbing wearily at his temples. "Finish what? _You're_ not doing anything! _They_ are; they're doing something pretty damn intense from the looks of it, and I can't just sit by and watch—"

Stepping between her sister and her Watcher, Buffy placed her hands on Dawn's shoulders and looked her in the eyes. "Dawnie, I know this is scary, okay? We don't know what's going on either. But Giles thinks it could be dangerous to try to break the spell now. So we're doing the best thing we can do for them. Just try to calm down."

"Yeah, like it's that easy," she said contemptuously, but she held back her questions for a while.

Several long minutes passed, and then Xander spoke for the first time since the spell had begun. "I've seen Willow do scarier stuff than this," he said. "She made it through then, and she will now."

"Are you going to tell the yellow crayon story again?" Anya asked. At Xander's irritated glance, she amended, "Because that never gets old."

"I don't mean Black-Haired Willow's Reign of Terror. That was bad, yeah, but on the freaky-mojo meter, there was one that topped it."

"Oh, are you talking about the spell we did to bring Buffy back from the dead, when Willow coughed up a snake and we all got distracted by those motorcycle demons and left Buffy to dig herself out of her own grave?" Anya nodded wisely. "That _was_ worse than this. And in retrospect, a bad idea all-around, since Buffy was in heaven and didn't even _want_ to be brought back."

"Thanks for the recap, An," Xander sighed.

Anya smiled. "You're welcome."

Inside the eerie red light, Spike and Willow remained locked together, the pool of blood between them spreading over the cement floor like an oilslick. Checking to make sure no one was watching her, Dawn edged a little closer.

xXxXx

"I don't know where the bloody hell we're supposed to be going," Spike grumbles. "You telling me this is your brilliant plan, to wander the streets until we stumble on something that makes a damn bit of sense? So far nothing does, Red."

"For the hundredth time, we are _in your mind_, Spike. We keep walking, we're bound to catch a clue." She frowns. "Besides, what's _your_ brilliant plan? Track down Drusilla and catch up on old times?"

He shoots her a glare. "Bite your tongue. Seen all of that one I can stomach for one night." His brow furrows. "Tell me, was she always quite so looney? I mean, I know she was a little _off_, but—"

"Actually, she seems way more lucid in your brain than she ever did in real life."

"Huh. Funny, that." He suddenly stops, flinging an arm out so that Willow walks into it and comes to a halt beside him. She looks at him questioningly as he tilts his head, listening hard. "Down here," he says, pointing to an alley off the main cobblestone path they've been following. She opens her mouth to ask what's going on, but he grasps her elbow and steers her along beside him until they are safely ensconced in the shadows between two buildings. "Quiet," he whispers fiercely. "Something's coming."

xXxXx

**_Please let me know if you're still interested and would like me to keep this story going. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed or sent me PMs so far, especially the Anonymous people who I can't reply to personally. Always happy to hear from you!_**


	11. Chapter 11

Well. This isn't turning out the way she'd expected. And just what _had_ she expected, anyway? To break the spell when she put her hand into that red glowy bubble surrounding Spike and Willow? To be the hero for once, instead of the victim? To show him she really was sorry for the way she'd been treating him, and that her forgiveness was unconditional, that she would endanger herself for him because he was _worth_ it? Whatever. Clearly her course of action could have used a little forethought.

_Where am I?_ she wonders, and then jumps a little because she has spoken the words aloud. Her voice is jarring in the still night air of this eerie place she's found herself. The words reverberate, bouncing off the cobblestones beneath her feet and the crumbling brick and stone of the faceless buildings crowding either side of the narrow alley.

She holds her breath, half expecting an answer to come floating out of the deep, haunting shadows all around, and if that happens she will run, just take off and sprint blindly away from the sound because wherever she is, it feels _wrong_, it feels _cold_, and nothing good can emerge from that blackness.

When the silence spins out and she's marginally convinced she's not about to be attacked and strung up by her entrails, she turns in a slow, tight circle, taking in the big picture—which is just more of the same. Biting her lip and gathering her courage, she starts walking. Because … what else is she gonna do?

What would Buffy do? Besides kill Dawn for being here in the first place, that is. And be way more prepared to fight anything that might slink or ooze or lumber out of those ominous shadows intent on crushing the life out of this uninvited guest. Buffy has been training her, sure—but she is far from earning her Slayer stripes, and even on routine Sunnydale cemetery sweeps, with Buffy hovering so close Dawn can hear her breath at her back, she manages to miss the heart by a good half-inch on every third vamp. Not exactly a record that inspires confidence. Plus, now, she's completely defenseless. The stake Buffy all but glued into her hand back in the basement _(a few minutes ago? Was that all?)_ is gone. Dawn is alone and unarmed in unfamiliar territory that may or may not be a hell dimension, and she knows quite enough about hell dimensions, thank you very much, having done a fair amount of morbid research when Buffy was gone and everyone assumed she was in one. Things Dawn shouldn't have read from books she wasn't supposed to touch are projecting on the movie screen of her mind, all shredding teeth and ripping claws and terror and torture and dark, dark, dark—forever.

Which is why, when she turns a corner and slams face-first into Spike, she lets out an ear-piercing scream and comes perilously close to wetting her pants before recognition and sweet harsh suffocating relief sweep over her. He grabs her by the arms before her knees buckle, and she lets out a half-sob as she gazes up raptly into those sharp, concerned blue eyes.

"Christ, Bit, what are you—"

"I just wanted to stop the spell, I swear, that's all I was trying to do. You guys were really scaring us back there, and I just wanted to get you out, make it stop. We thought it was going to kill you. I don't think it was working anyway. Where's Willow? Where are _we_?" The words tumble out of her in a rush because she is so happy to see him, so intensely relieved because safety is a given now, a guarantee, and no matter what's lurking around the next corner, she will be all right. It's _Spike._

He glances back into the shadows behind him and then looks at her, shrugging lightly. "Not sure," he says. "Not sure it matters. Main thing is to get you out of here. Come with me." 

He takes her arm and begins to lead her back the way he'd come, Dawn resisting, insistent on getting all her facts straight because something here isn't right. She feels it, the _wrongness._ "Spike, wait a second. Wait. You haven't seen her?"

"Who?" he asks distractedly, tugging her along impatiently as she drags her feet.

_"Willow."_ Dawn frowns sideways at him as she picks up her pace to keep up with his long strides without having her arm torn from the socket, and why is he walking so fast anyway, when he seems as clueless as she is about where they are? "Willow Rosenberg, resident witch in charge of this spell and probably our key to getting the hell out of wherever-we-are. Ring a bell? She has to be here somewhere, Spike, and _hang on a second!_" She jerks to a stop and plants her hands on her hips stubbornly.

He spins to fix her with a frustrated glare, working his best expression of intimidation that she's long been immune to, ever since she realized her strength of will matched his own. She glares right back. 

"Spike, we've got to find her."

He seems to size her up for a moment, and then his expression softens and he sighs unnecessarily and leans against the brick wall behind him. "Don't know how to say this, Bit," he says, and her heart skips a beat. "I know it's going to come as a shock, and I hate to be the one to lay this on you, but maybe then you'll understand why we've got to get you away from here."

"What are you saying?" Dawn asks, her voice trembling. He's not looking her in the eyes. She can't read him when he's not looking her in the eyes. "Spike?"

"I found her." He nods as if to indicate the exact spot. "Lying in the street, drained. Dead. 'Bout an hour ago, maybe more, maybe less. Can't be sure, time's different here."

Dawn feels sour bile rise at the back of her throat, and when he reaches for her she draws back violently. "No," she says. "Don't."

"You have to come, sweet, don't you understand? There's something here. Something evil. It's coming; I can feel it. It wants you—_just_ you. We can't just stand by and wait for it to find us."

Dawn raises watery blue eyes to his and jerks away again when he reaches once more for her hand. _Something … _

"You have to come, Dawn. Come with me, now!" His tone is becoming more commanding, less pleading, and she knows that in a moment he will stop trying to convince her and just _take_ her, and that _wrongness_ is everywhere, it's all around now, choking. She shrinks back one more time from his grasping hand, turns a bewildered gaze on him.

"Spike? What are you doing?" she asks hollowly. "Willow—?"

"Is _dead,_ I told you. Dead, as you're going to be if you don't move your ass and follow me like a good girl. Do you want to die, Dawnie?"

_Do you want her to suffer?_

Never.

Her lips part, as her jaw slackens. Already huge eyes widen even more. "You don't call me that."

He looks exasperated. "What?"

"Dawnie. You never call me Dawnie." Without realizing it, she is backing slowly, steadily away from him.

"Oh, bloody hell, Dawn, will you stop being such a— Where do you think you're going? Come back here!"

_"Who are you?"_

He laughs, as if he's going to shake his head and roll his eyes and tell her to stop this buggering foolishness _right now_ and think about what she's saying, and for a moment she teeters on the edge, wanting to believe she's reading the signals wrong, that she's disoriented and shaken and quite possibly dreaming, or making up horror to mask horror because she's a masochist because all teenagers are masochists, and this is _Spike_, who would never hurt her _(if he could help it)_—

And the next moment, as she's still teetering, he grabs her around the waist and yanks her to him so suddenly her neck whips backward and the strength rushes from her like a ragdoll as needle-sharp teeth sink into tender flesh.

**To be continued…**


	12. Chapter 12

Upon later pondering, no one in the basement could venture a guess as to how long Dawn had been missing before Xander called their attention to her absence with an alarmed "Uh, Buff?" and a pointedly questioning scan of the room. In the ensuing search, exasperation quickly ratcheted up to concern, then worry. The general vibe was approaching panic by the time Buffy returned from a frantic and fruitless sweep of the upstairs.

"She's not up there; I checked everywhere. Do you think she could have left the house? Where would she go? No one saw her leave the basement?"

"Don't you think one of us would have thought to mention that by now?" Anya asked distractedly, bending over to check behind a large cardboard box as if expecting to find Dawn crouching there in an ill-conceived game of hide-and-seek.

Buffy glared at her, and Xander quickly jumped in with the voice of reason. "Look, we were all distracted by the—_that_—maybe she just got bored and left. She's a teenager; they're fickle, right? So black magic and blood and big balls of red energy just didn't compare to hanging out at the mall with her friends, and she bailed; it's not that far-f—"

"Buffy," Giles interrupted, and the glasses came off and he was wearing his I-hate-to-be-the-one-to-mention-what-we're-all-thinking expression. "We have to allow for the possibility that Dawn—" He paused, racking his brain for a phrasing that wouldn't up the alarm quotient tenfold.

"What?" Buffy prodded, and of course she would make him say it, even though it wasn't necessary, because something as innocuous as her fifteen-year-old sister's wandering upstairs without telling anyone wouldn't spawn the kind of base panic that he now saw in her eyes.

"It's possible that she—" He paused once more, glancing meaningfully toward the proverbial elephant in the room.

"—got sucked into the spell," Anya finished bluntly.

"_What?"_ Xander blurted in a tone which indicated that he, for one, might not have considered this possibility. "That's crazy! Wouldn't we be able to see her? She'd be in there with them, right?" He gestured toward Spike and Willow, then looked back at Giles, shaking his head. "Unless … what are we saying here, Giles?"

"I don't know, Xander. This kind of spell is unpredictable; I couldn't say with any certainty what might happen to one who tried to intervene. It's possible that Dawn was transported _corporeally_, where Spike and Willow are only mentally engaged."

"Okay, I'm with you, Giles, but what does that _mean_?" Buffy demanded. "How can we get her back?"

The silence hung heavy in the air.

xXxXx

She's swimming in darkness, tinged red at the edges, and fear is there, but muffled and unimportant now. Pain, too. It's nice, she decides, to know the sting of both in a detached manner, to recognize them from an academic standpoint completely separate from her, from these soothing depths where nothing can touch her ...

But even as she basks in this strange comfort, cold strong hands are grasping, clutching, squeezing, shaking, and she's being pulled helplessly toward the sharp clarity of the waking world—or whatever passes for it here. She senses something—_desperation?_—and hears words but doesn't comprehend them, perhaps by sheer force of will, because she doesn't _want_ to understand. She clings fast to the place where nothing matters, even as she slips relentlessly away from it.

"Wake up, Dawn, do you hear me? Wake _up!_"

The words are punctuated by a sharp shake that snaps her head back on her shoulders, and kneeling next to Spike, Willow gasps. "Hey, don't!" she starts, reaching to take Dawn from his arms. She freezes at the sound of the low threatening growl rumbling up from his throat as he tightens his grip on the girl. Willow settles for brushing a long silky lock of hair off Dawn's forehead, her brow furrowed with concern.

"She's so pale, Spike, I—"

"She's fine. She'll be fine, won't you, sweetheart? 'Course she will."

"What if he—you—_that_—comes back?"

"I'll tear its fucking head off."

"Okay, but I don't know if that's an option, Spike, I mean, he was _you_. He _looked_ like you, he's going around sucking the life out of people in this freaky mind carnival—I don't know how we can defend ourselves against that!"

He spares Willow a fleeting glance and in it she sees the dichotomy of William and William the Bloody, gentle and wounded and uncertain, fierce, unbreakable, and merciless, a dizzying jumble of contradictions that mesmerizes her and makes a shiver zip down her spine. _Oh, there is power,_ she thinks inexplicably. _They're right to trust him._

"It hurt her," he says, and his voice is perfectly flat, perfectly steady, perfectly reasonable. "It's as good as dead, no matter what that means for me." His attention falls back to the girl in his arms, and his gaze doesn't soften at all. "Niblet, you listen to me, now. I'm not fucking around, and you know it. Wake _up_."

"Go easy, Spike, I don't think yelling at her is gonna—" Willow begins, and as he turns to snap her into silence her eyes widen and she directs his attention back to Dawn. Her eyelids are fluttering, long dark lashes brushing softly against too-pale skin, flashes of blue beneath.

"Dawnie?"

"That's it, that's my girl," Spike murmurs softly. "Come on, now. Open your eyes and look at me."

She awakes with a start, a pitiful moaning cry as her feet scrape and flail against cobblestone, her gaze fixed on him, panic pouring off her in waves. He loosens his hold on her but when his hands close on her shoulders she screams, a piercing glass-shard of noise in the stillness, and in his surprise his hands slacken and she slips out of his grip, scrambles to her feet, and tries to run.

"Dawn!" he shouts, and catches her easily as her sickeningly weak knees buckle and she goes sprawling toward the ground.

"_Let me GO!"_ she screams, and the terror in her voice is like ice in his nonfunctioning veins, and for a moment he's not sure he _didn't_ do this to her. Does it truly matter if the perpetrator was Spike in his right mind or a version of him coaxed out by the First to do away with the only people in the world who matter to him? Hardly. Dawn will be just as dead either way, eventually, because he is a killer and always will be and if he doesn't do her in himself he will be responsible for whatever harm befalls her, whenever the day comes that he fails them again. Inevitable, that.

She is right to run from him, to scream and claw and kick to escape. He's taught her well.

Willow appears next to him and perhaps the sight of her ought to have calmed the younger girl. Perhaps, once, it would have. Not so any more. _(You cry because you're human … but you weren't always … it's time you went back to being a little energy ball … no more tears, Dawnie.)_ All the magic-control training in the world can't erase some things. Sometimes forgiveness, even when sincere, holds exceptions. Willow sees this, the echoes of fear and betrayal, and it stings. Like always.

She tries for a comforting smile but it feels crooked and wrong and probably looks more like a grimace. "Dawnie, it's all right, it's us. You're going to be okay."

From Spike's bracing grasp, Dawn's gaze flits back and forth between them like a trapped animal.

"You're weak, love," Spike says in what he hopes is a soothing tone, easing his trembling burden back to the ground but keeping a solid grip on her this time. "You've lost a good deal of blood. Now I'm going to let go of you, but first you've gotta promise me you won't try to run away again. Yeah?"

Peering at him with impossibly wide blue eyes, she seems to look straight through him, straight through to his … soul. She needs more, he knows—he owes her more. And all he can offer is words that sound cheap even to his own ears.

"It wasn't me hurt you, sweet, you know that," he says. "We're in one buggering mess, here, and all I know is I'm getting you out of it in one piece, but I need you to trust me." For a moment he's tempted to look away from her because it's ludicrous, isn't it, to ask _that_ of her. _Trust me—I'm a demon. Trust me—I'm a rapist. Trust me—I've put many a gory end to someone else's pretty little girl with eyes just like yours and relished their fear and their tears and their pleas for mercy as they died. Trust me—I left you once before when you needed me most, and I'd do it a thousand times over if it meant your safety or hers … I'll die to keep from killing you, even if it's only a trick of the Hellmouth. If you let me back in I'm sure to break your heart._ Trust me.

After a lifetime her head moves almost imperceptibly in what could be classified as a nod of assent. Spike's eyes close just briefly in a moment of utter, utter relief.

"It really wasn't you," she says, voice shaking and soft and very unlike her normal one, making him fight an urge to scoop her up from the ground and smother her with good intentions.

It's not a question, but he shakes his head as he takes her hands in his. "It wasn't me, Bit." A declaration once avowed to another Summers echoes in his mind, and it's no less true when applied to this one, so he repeats it.

"I don't hurt you."

They are sitting on the ground, all three of them—under the premise of waiting for Dawn to regain some strength but actually at a total loss as to how to proceed—when a distant shout pierces the silence.

"Dawn! Dawnie, answer if you can hear me!"

_Buffy._


	13. Chapter 13

Buffy's disembodied voice echoes through the air, frantic, still far away but coming steadily closer. Reflexively, Dawn draws in breath to call out to her sister, but with blinding speed Spike's hand clamps down over her mouth. She tilts her head up to meet his gaze questioningly, with a healthy dose of indignation, and he cocks an eyebrow at her, silently but effectively conveying the reprimand: _"Thought you had more brains than that, Bit. Keep quiet."_

He slowly removes his hand and nods toward Willow, who takes Dawn's elbow and draws her gently but insistently into the shadows of the nearest alleyway. Spike watches until he's satisfied that they're properly hidden, then slips away.

"I don't like this," Dawn whispers. "If he thinks it's not really Buffy, then why the hell is he going to confront her?"

Willow takes a deep breath. "Well … I don't know. I guess we'll just wait and see."

"So what if it _isn't_ Buffy?" Dawn's eyes grow wider. "Or what if it _is_ her and she mistakes him for Not-Spike and attacks him? Or what if Not-Spike finds Real Buffy before Real Spike does and Real Buffy thinks it's Real Spike and _she_ gets attacked? I think we need to follow him."

Willow frowns. "Please slow down, Dawnie. You're making my head spin."

"Can't you do something? This is your spell, right? You've gotta know how to get us out of here."

"I—I'm working on it. It's just … this one's a little complicated, and I'm kinda rusty."

"Rusty? Come on, Will, it wasn't that long ago that you were a yellow crayon short of _ending the world._ You really want me to believe that after a couple of Wiccan behavior-mod classes with Giles's coven buddies, all the good stuff just slipped your mind?"

Willow looks stung. "It's not that simple," she says plaintively.

An odd expression, equal parts frustration, disappointment, and disbelief, flickers across Dawn's features. "Sure it's not."

"Dawnie—"

"Tara would know what to do," Dawn mutters under her breath, pointedly averting her gaze and feeling a sharp stab of guilt even as the words escape her lips of their own volition. "She'd get us home."

There is no answer, but in such close proximity, Dawn can feel Willow's body stiffen and hear the breath catch in her throat. Witnessing the physical impact of her own insensitivity makes Dawn immediately ashamed, if not quite ready to embrace and beg forgiveness. _No more tears, Dawnie._ She shudders.

xXxXx

Spike pinpoints her exact location and knows that if this is a trick, it's a bloody fine one. That scent. _Her_ scent—it's unmistakable. Still, he must act carefully, if for no other reason than the sake of Red and the Bit. He isn't too keen on leaving them back there clinging to each other in the shadows like lost children straight out of some bloody fairy tale. They're depending on him to save the day. To come back with Buffy or to come back with one less manifestation of evil to worry about for as long as they're stuck in this sodding place Red insists is his own psyche. And he'll do it, he _will_ get them out of this. Because Dawn is starting to trust him again, and because no one else ever has.

He sidles up next to a stone wall at the corner of one of the looming odd-angled buildings, beyond which lurks Buffy—or something doing a damned good impersonation—and waits, listening, trying to tap into the preternatural vampire senses that usually give him the edge in situations like this. She's there, all right, standing as still as he is now, perhaps trying to detect telltale signs of danger with her own heightened Slayer senses (or those of the First, as the case may be), and he feels an absurd urge to hold his breath. Funny, how ingrained those human impulses remain long after they've lost all purpose.

Steeling himself, he steps around the corner—at the same moment she chooses to do the same. Any two ordinary people would have collided; instead they stop just short of it and stare at one another. He tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes, studying her carefully for the minutest hint of _wrongness_. He senses her unease, the inherent _holding back_ that's so often the closest she comes to showing fear. He senses her worry, hears her shallow breathing, the rapid rhythmic thump of her heart and accompanying rush of blood through her veins, knows the stillness that belies her perpetual readiness for battle.

An unbidden and too-recent memory floods his mind—Buffy, bleeding, wrecked, lying broken and lifeless and hollow on the ground in a jumbled heap that spells the end of him as well as them—and the rush of relief at seeing her so vital and fresh and complex and _real_ staggers him, makes him uncharacteristically lead-tongued. He's lost for words beyond the obvious.

"Buffy? It's you?"

Her expression, wary and charged, doesn't waver. "Last I checked. Why are you looking at me like that? Where's Dawn and Willow?"

"Safe; they're safe. I wasn't sure—I didn't know if it was—" He breaks off, shakes his head impatiently at his fumbling. When he continues it's with a trace of his trademark smirk. "Listen, pet, I'd feel a bit better if you'd drop the stake."

She glances at her raised right hand, where the business end of the weapon protrudes from that deceptively delicate fist, and she seems taken aback, as if her arm has betrayed her somehow. Even so, she doesn't lower it immediately, and when she does, she doesn't lower it completely. Their eyes lock, and the heavy hesitation tells him all he needs to know. This is most definitely Buffy, in the flesh, and she's even now pondering the possibility that he's done something to Dawn and Willow. Bitterly he acknowledges the inevitability of that mistrust. What's he done, after all, to give her reason to do otherwise? Surely nothing of late. Surely little, ever.

"Where's Dawn?" she asks again.

"I left them hidden together, back this way. I didn't want them following me into danger if it came to it." He starts down the path that will lead back to the others. Buffy hesitates a moment longer before falling in step with him.

"They're all right?"

He pauses, stomach clenching at another memory, this one _real_ and all the more unbearable for it, of turning a corner with the red-haired witch and coming upon that—thing_(himself, it was him, and he was killing her, sucking her dry, and bloody_fuck_ why did he always fail them when it mattered?)—_ with a barely conscious yet still weakly struggling Dawn in his arms.

"They're fine," he says smoothly.

"Good. Then I'm going to kill her."

"Yeah, Niblet does some bloody stupid things—'specially when she thinks someone she cares about's in danger." He glances sideways at Buffy with a tight, not-altogether-amused smile. "Wonder where she gets that from?"

"Watch it. I've still got this." She twirls the stake expertly in her hand, and he acknowledges the offhand threat with a melodramatic eyeroll.

"Please. If you were up to that, you'd've done it long ago and we both know it. Point is, we're in a hell of a mess now, stuck here in what Willow s'poses is my bleeding _mind_, and it was complicated enough before you and your brat sister came charging in here to play hero."

"I'm not _playing,_" she counters. "But I wasn't going to just stand there in that basement while you guys got the psychic mind-meld mojo out of your system and Dawn was nowhere to be found. This is me, being proactive."

"This is you, being a pain in my arse."

"Well, the second half of my mission is accomplished, then. Good to know. Can we just find Dawn and Will, and figure out how to get out of here?"

He stops walking so suddenly that she outpaces him a few steps before realizing he's not beside her any longer. Backtracking, she looks around at their shadowy surroundings, trying to follow the direction of his rapt attention. "Earth to Spike," she says. "What's up? What do you see?"

"Not what I see," he says mildly. "What I don't see."

"What are you talking about?" Buffy asks impatiently, unnerved by his suddenly wary demeanor and fixed stare.

"I left them right here," he says, his tone still mostly steady but, to the practiced observer, betraying a ragged edge. He tears his gaze away to meet Buffy's wide eyes.

"They're gone."

xXxXx

**To be continued…**


	14. Chapter 14

Her eyelids feel heavy, so she doesn't try too hard to open them. The effort she does expend affords her little more than narrow slits of black with pinpricks of light sprinkled here and there. Flickering candles, maybe. But that's all she wants to know, thank you very much, because something is _wrong_, again, and she's so frickin' tired of wrong, and all she wants to do now is rest her eyes and _be out of mortal peril._ Not so much to ask, right?

Wrong. Wrong, because she's The Key. Wrong, because she's Buffy's sister, because she's Spike's cross to bear, if you'll forgive ill-advised vampire punnage. Because, bottom line, she's Dawn Summers. Mortal peril follows her around like a rabid little puppy. And, okay, so she's been known to seek it out, when it's having trouble finding her. It can be a nice distraction from The Bad, which is also a frequent visitor in The Life of Dawn. You know, The Bad: like, for example, losing your identity. Or your mom. Like losing your sister, because she's the hero and you're just, deep down, a scared little kid. You would have jumped, sure, but you weren't as devastated by not having to as you should have been. You're _evil,_ no matter what he tells you. If there was good in you, you'd've found a way to Die For The World, like she did without a second thought. So sometimes, just because it seems right in its wrongness, you do stupid, stupid things.

"_Woulda served you right if he'd left your scrawny corpse rotting away in the gutter, you fuckin' half-wit!"_

Ouch, that's familiar. Dawn lets her eyes slip all the way shut again, and it's something of a relief, postponing the sparkling darkness of the here and now that's neither here nor now, and she's greeted by a long-past confrontation that even in memory form is rich and churning and rancid with emotion. There they are, projected on the movie screen behind her eyelids, she and her erstwhile bodyguard. He is glaring down at her and she at her feet, donned in sleek black leather boots that she remembers now had worn blisters on her heels that night. She also remembers, as she watches the scene unfold, the uncomfortable way the carved knobby things on the back of the dining room chair dug into her spine, and that she was determined not to shift or fidget so he wouldn't misinterpret her discomfort as any kind of _remorse_.

It's kind of cool to watch herself from outside her body. It's also easier to acknowledge his side now, without the handicap of actually _being_ the resentful target of his wrath.

"_Well then why didn't you let him?"_ Ago-Dawn snipes not-very-wisely, not looking up because she can't bring herself to meet his glare, and who knew eyes that cold and blue could _burn?_

Her proactive flinch is no match for vamp speed, and they're nose to nose, his hand gripping her chin so she can't look away. If it's possible to _sneer_ words, that's what he does. Both Dawns cringe.

"_Because if anyone is going to bring your life to an early and painful end, Dawn, it's not going to be some pants-pissing fledge you happen across the third night of his unlife and decide to have a dance with. It's going to be ME, and it's going to be on MY terms, not yours. And maybe sooner'n you'd like, you don't straighten up."_

Ago-Dawn fights the tears that have flooded her eyes, and waits until he has released her chin and retreated from her space before responding.

"_Go on and do it, if you want. Save me the trouble of finding another way."_

He is furious, Observer-Dawn notes with a slight shudder, but her counterpart doesn't see because of her preoccupation with the boots. She's probably lucky he doesn't take her up on the challenge then and there, chip be damned. His jaw clenches and unclenches rhythmically as he visibly reins in the part of himself that defaults to violence out of long habit. After an eternal, tense silence, he reaches for her hands. She tries to jerk them away, but he isn't having that. She blows out a huffy, put-upon breath that ruffles a lock of long brown hair.

"_You want to die, Niblet, you're going to have one raging bitch of a time doing it as long as I'm anything but dust. Whatever this is, whatever you're trying to prove to yourself, or me, or them … or to Buffy … it ends here. Do we understand each other?"_

Dawn doesn't answer, but her shoulders slump, and she's defeated because she _knows_. She knows that his devotion to her isn't just a rider to his Buffy-obsession. That they're lost now, without her, but that they're lost _together_, which in itself makes it a cut above unbearable. And if Dawn checks out, if she takes this deathgame too far and actually wins, or loses, whatever—Spike will be right behind her.

When she finally meets his eyes and nods, he offers no reaction. His stony expression budges not an inch, and he simply stands and reaches for the glass of whiskey he'd almost smashed against the wall at the start of this ordeal. He drains the glass, fixes her with another glare, albeit one that seems a bit less murderous, and tells her to get herself upstairs to bed.

She stops in the doorway and stares at his back, her mouth hanging open and a reluctant question forming on her lips. Her fingers drift up to delicately explore the telltale marks on her neck, two neat holes with ragged tears trailing down, the latter caused by Spike's unexpected and violent intervention in the alley next to The Bronze (that vamp even Dawn could tell was wet behind the ears, newly risen, formerly a football player at her school, locked to her in a nauseating but exhilarating kiss, suddenly ripped away in a red-hot flare of pain and exploding in a cloud of dust even as Spike's obscenity-laced derision began).

"_No," Spike says, startling her. "I won't tell them. This is between us, and as long as you keep yourself out of trouble from now on there's no need troubling the others."_

The scene fades out as if indeed it were some disturbingly realistic television program, and Dawn struggles once more with the cumbersome task of opening her eyes. Those flickers of light again, floating chaotically in a patch of darkness. And then a voice cuts through the static of semiconsciousness, and she's fully awake—and she's chained to a wall. Directly in front of her is the creep wearing Spike's body. The one who, if it is in fact The First, should by all accounts not be able to touch her, but who had—an hour ago? Longer?—come pretty damn close to killing her. Missed the mark on that one, Giles.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Bit." He offers a half-smile that reminds her of Spike's formerly evil existence. "At least temporarily."

Yeah, she's getting really sick of mortal peril.

xXxXx

Willow keeps her eyes fixed straight ahead as she runs, breathless but determined. Each time she begins to feel discouraged, she catches another glimpse of her target, a flash of yellow, blurred in the darkness of this maze of alleys. She will catch up. She _will_.

It's the echoes of her own footfalls that makes her think Dawnie's still in step behind her. She doesn't turn around to check. Later, when she reflects on that, she wonders if it would have changed her course, realizing that Dawn was missing, or if she would have continued her dogged pursuit of those flashes of yellow and the unspeakable promise they dangle before her. _Of course I would have gone back for Dawn_ she will tell herself, then. But she wonders.

xXxXx

"Dawn!"

"Willow? Dawn! Where are you?"

"Niblet! Answer me!"

"Spike, if they could hear us they'd yell back. Where the hell could they have gone?"

"I don't know."

Her eyes flash irritably in the darkness. "Why not?" she snaps. "Isn't this your turf? Your _mind_? You're not that complex, Spike, there couldn't _be_ that many hiding places."

"Oh, witty, Slayer. And helpful. Keep up the running bitchery while I track down _your_ sister and _your_ friend."

"Maybe we should split up."

"'S not your worst idea ever."

"Okay, then, you go that way, and I'll—"

He rolls his eyes, catching her arm as she starts away from him. "'S not the most brilliant one ever dreamed up, either, pet. I'm not letting you out of my sight, not when we don't know what we're dealing with."

"Oh please, Spike. I think I can handle myself without a big strong man around to get in my way."

"I mean it, Buffy. I don't like this. I got a bad feelin', and you charging off into who-knows-what when Red and Bit have already gone missing is not what's gonna make it better. Now come on. I'll lead."

He fully expects her to argue some more, but she surprises him by falling in step beside him—an obvious affront to his "leading" efforts. They continue deeper into the labyrinth of dark alleys, occasionally calling for Dawn and Willow, but more and more letting the eerie silence wash over them as they strain for the slightest meaningful sound. The nothing they get in return is, in itself, terrifying.

xXxXx

**To be continued…**


	15. Chapter 15

They're running in circles. The first time this bit of unpleasant truth occurs to him, he pushes it aside and simply refocuses his efforts, sharpening his naturally sharp senses in a hell-bent attempt to catch just a hint, the faintest sigh or rustle or whiff of salt that would lead them to Bit and Willow. Nothing. Then—and the second time he can't deny it and it seems unwise to try—they're back where they started, again. Buffy doesn't notice. Her panic is building, he can smell it like pennies, like blood; he can almost hear the buzz of it emanating from her pores like steam from a kettle. He's struck simultaneously by the strange beauty of it and the crush of guilt, the still-new weight of responsibility that the soul has fastened around his neck.

He reaches out to catch her arm, and she shakes him off with such force that his well-honed instincts snap him into offensive mode. But her eyes hit him then, harder than any fighting blow. Clear and sharp, glistening in the light from—wherever the hell the light around here is coming from. So instead of the reflexive backhand he means to deliver, he reaches again, purposefully, and grabs her by both elbows, snatching a sharp little gasp from her as he jerks her forward. No time for gentle, and she'd steamroller him if he tried. The force in her responds only to force, and then she listens.

"We're not getting anywhere, Buffy. Been through here twice already. We've got to stop and get our bearings."

"Stop? Are you kidding?"

"Not really in a sporting mood, pet."

"Well that makes two of us. And I'm not feeling all that chatty right now either, so move your ass or stay here and _get your bearings_ while I go and find them."

He adjusts his grip on her before she can pull away. "I'm saying—the place is changing on us, Buffy. Don't you feel it? It's—smaller. Like we're shut off from the rest of it somehow. An' I'd wager Dawn and Willow are on the _other_ side. We can't help them if we're stuck here running around like rats in a bloody maze."

He sees his logic hit the mark, and releases her. Takes a step back, even, so she can process and accept. Waits as she turns her back on him, draws breath so deep it strains her lungs, and screams Dawn's name into the silence. The cry echoes back and back and back, ricocheting off stone and brick and dark, assuming a chilling, empty quality by the end of its play. Spike closes his eyes.

She turns back to him, and he sees cracks in her armor that once would have enticed him. "We can't just— We've got to— Spike…"

He sets his jaw. "We will."

xXxXx

So apparently the plan is to talk her to death. And he—it?—isn't far from success, if that's the goal. It's a slow torture, captive audience that she is, as he pokes and prods her with words, testing her psyche for signs of tenderness, bruising, scars to tear open along their fault lines. She clings stubbornly to her composure and reminds herself repeatedly that this isn't really him. She tries to drown out the sound of his voice with the soothing white noise of her thoughts. He seeps in through the cracks.

Mom. _(not yours, though, and gone gone gone)_

Buffy. _(resents you just like the rest of them, how she's always having to save you when you don't even belong; saved you against their will, she did, and they'll always hate you for what death did to her, the way it changed her from the girl they loved)_

Willow. _(would've killed you if she'd got the chance; you bother her deeper 'cause she can feel the connections, all of them, the flowers pushing straight through the earth to the other side, it's all about root systems, she thinks, and you're not a part of it. Not connected to anything or anyone and you know it)_

Tara. _(wasn't quite gone when you found her, could've saved her instead of cowering in the corner like a frightened child. Could've but didn't, and she's maybe the only one who ever really gave a fuck about you, so what a way to treat her when she needed your help)_

Spike. _(…)_

Dawn jerks her lolling head up to shoot an acid glare at the thing wearing his face and the smile she gets in return is mocking, self-satisfied, evil beyond evil. It occurs to her vaguely that anger is the best remedy for fear.

"This isn't working. Whatever you're trying to do. You're not telling me anything I don't know, that I haven't come to terms with by now. If you're trying to get inside my head you'd better try something other than evil amateur psychology." She summons Buffy's courage, Buffy's confident swagger, squares her shoulders, and forces a steady challenge: "Go ahead and kill me, if you're gonna. Save us both some time." On the tail of that, she chides herself, _Damn it, Dawn! Dumbest stalling tactic EVER._

He sidles over from the pacing path he's been wearing into the dirty stone floor as he chips away at her defenses. He's so close that she would feel his breath on her cheek if he were breathing. "No, love," he purrs. "'S not my job. I'm just laying the groundwork." She flinches angrily away as he lifts a hand and rakes it through her tangled hair.

"Don't touch me," she growls.

The stolen laugh is brittle, and haunting because she knows it by heart.

xXxXx

Willow's muscles have seized up and her feet, gone numb from the pounding rhythm of her steps, don't even feel like a part of her. There's a hot needle stabbing into her side in time with her rapid, ragged breathing. She would be surprised to notice that there are tear tracks on her cheeks. She doesn't. The toe of one shoe scuffs the pavement and she goes sprawling, scraping both palms raw as she uses them to break the fall. Strands of copper hair stick to her sweaty face, her wet cheeks, as she struggles to her knees and yells hoarsely down the alleyway.

"Wait! Please, wait!" Drawing air so deeply into her lungs that they seem ready to burst, she tries again: _"TARA!"_

The desperation she hears in the wail is like a shot of cold water in the face. Blinking, she pushes up to her knees and takes a look around, for the first time actually noting her surroundings. Noting the darkness, pressing in on all sides. And the stillness, lying over everything like a heavy transparent blanket. And the solitude. _Dawn._

She fears the non-answer before it comes. "Dawnie?" Desperation is still there, but with a new focus, sharp with the clarity of reason. She has been lured away, blindly following a promise of impossibility, and all the while Dawn …

Casting just one glance back over her shoulder, just one because hope dies last, Willow begins to run in the opposite direction, panic devouring physical pain.

xXxXx**  
**

**To be continued …**


	16. Chapter 16

It's becoming clear to Dawn that there's rhyme and reason to this exercise in psychological trauma. She doesn't quite grasp what it is, not yet, and not for lack of trying, but she understands more than she has much right to. Somehow, she realizes, she's in the unenviable position of playing Key once more, and once more she stands between life and death, Spike's grip on himself and this malign force that wants to turn him into its killing machine. Starting with Dawn and Buffy, and finishing with the world. It's about separating her from them, shaking her loyalty to them, her trust in them, her love for them.

_If I give in, that's it for all of us._

The thought comes from nowhere, and Dawn almost gasps at the clarity of it, the sharpness, the _accuracy._ She doesn't have time to ponder the whys or the hows just now, because she is beginning to crack, and she's pretty sure he knows it. It's getting harder by the second to shut herself off to the emotional assault.

Because Tara is smirking at her.

And Mom is mocking.

And Buffy is taunting.

She'd been able to steel herself against Spike, against his face and his voice and his corrosive running monologue, because what else had she expected? But to see these others standing before her, speaking what feels like truth even though each would've denied it to the end, is different. Effective. And she is slipping.

_You could've saved me, Dawnie. Why didn't you? I would've done anything for you. I bought you milkshakes and took you to movies and gave you normal because it's what both of us needed most. You watched me die. You didn't even hold my hand. Was that too much to expect? Couldn't you have done more? Couldn't you have _been_ more?_

"Tara—" Dawn swallows the bile that has risen in her throat and tries to still the tremors in her voice. "I didn't know what to do." She squeezes her eyes shut tight against the ghost and the guilt and reassures herself that this too is a trick, just a trick of the First, Tara doesn't think that way, she wouldn't ever blame Dawn for anything.

She takes a breath and opens her eyes with new determination that is just as quickly swept away when she lays eyes on her latest companion. The exhale sounds more like a sob.

_You were never one of mine, Dawn. They shoved you in and you never really fit and I knew it, somewhere deep down, that you were a lie, and that we were different for it. You still blame Spike for trying to rape your sister, when your very existence is a product of rape. Our past, our memories, our family. Forced on us and in us with no hope of resisting. Buffy should have let Glory have you._

Dawn grits her teeth. "You're not my mom."

Horribly, the thing that looks like her mother smiles serenely at that, and reaches a long, cold finger out to gently stroke Dawn's cheek.

_Of course I'm not, dear. I never was._

Eyes shut again, two tears slipping from their corners. "Go away. Please just go away … I don't understand this."

_Well that's a shocker. Baby sis doesn't understand._

Dawn winces but forces herself to face the perfect likeness of Buffy that now paces the floor in front of her.

_You never understand anything, Dawn. Up on the tower, you didn't understand what you were supposed to do until it was too late and I had to make your decision for you. Thanks for that, by the way. If I'd never died I wouldn't have had the chance to be dragged back onstage for an encore. And then I would have missed out on all the really fun stuff, like fucking Spike into oblivion, using his love against him until he turned back into the monster we all conveniently forgot that he always was._

"He's not a monster."

_Oh yeah. He's got a_ soul _now._

"That's not what makes him different from other vampires. That's not what sets him apart. There's good in him; there always has been. It's why I love him. It's why _Buffy_ loves him. It's why he loves us."

There is an odd shifting sensation; Buffy is gone and Spike appears in her place. He moves close, closer. He gives Dawn an appraising look, head cocked to the left, eyes narrow, twinkling with dangerous good humor, tongue pressing against white, white teeth. A low rumble of fear awakens in her belly, and she unconsciously flattens herself tighter against the wall at her back.

"Stop," she says, but the word is barely a whisper. "They're coming for me, and they'll kill you if you touch me."

xXxXx

Spike's learned to trust his gut, and he doesn't like what it's telling him now. Something is wrong. Something, some unknown foundation is beginning to crack, and when it does this odd landscape will split down the middle and leave them separated, stranded … worse. His bit is in danger. The knowledge and its baseless source is the worst kind of torment.

When Buffy snatches at his arm to stop him he is so on edge that he almost strikes out at her. Then he hears it. Distant, but growing closer. Shouts. Desperate, frantic. Repeating Dawn's name, over and over.

"Willow," Buffy confirms unnecessarily. "Let's go."

Before he can stop her, she's gone, blonde hair flashing out behind her as she runs.

"Slayer!" he calls after her. "Wait, it could be—" Useless to warn her, though. So he takes off after.

They follow the sound of her voice, close now, closer, until Willow comes barreling around a blind corner and slams full-tilt into Buffy, whose Slayer-quick reflexes don't prevent the force from knocking her backward onto her ass, Willow landing on top of her. They hug, and Spike reaches down to pull Willow to her feet.

"Where is she?" he demands.

Willow's eyes fill with tears as she glances from Spike to Buffy, still sprawled gracelessly on the ground, reaction hinging wholly on Will's response.

She takes too long to speak, and Spike grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her perhaps a bit too hard, eliciting a little yelp from Willow and a slight sound of disapproval from Buffy. _"Where?" _he repeats.

"I don't know," she says. "I—I was running. I saw— It was Tara … I thought Dawn was behind me, and by the time— Oh God, I'm sorry, Buffy!" Tears spill down her cheeks and Spike fights the urge to shake her again, harder.

"You left her," he says through clenched teeth. "You ran off after some mirage of your dead lover and _left_ her."

"Spike, stop."

Willow and Spike both look at Buffy, who is regaining her feet and slipping into what they both recognize as full-on Slayer mode. "Will, take us back the way you came. Show us where you last remember seeing her. If she's here, we'll find her."

xXxXx

He has no way of knowing the synchronicity, the fact that the moment the Spike-thing's hands move to violate Dawn is the moment he turns to attack Buffy.


End file.
